Welcome to "The Radio Art Hour," a show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio. "The Radio Art Hour" draws from the Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive, an online resource that aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks made by artists around the world, created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or independent transmission. Come on a journey with us as radio artists explore broadcast radio space through poetic resuscitations and playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers in this hour of radio about radio as an art form. "The Radio Art Hour" features introductions from Philip Grant and Tom Roe, and from Wave Farm Radio Art Fellows Karen Werner, Andy Stuhl, Jess Speer, and Jos Alejandro Rivera. The Conet Project's recordings of numbers radio stations serve as interstitial sounds. Go to wavefarm.org for more information about "The Radio Art Hour" and Wave Farm's Radio Art Archive.
This week tune in radio works from Negativland, Iru Ekpunobi, and Chris Brookes, and radio songs from Elvis Costello and Mercury Rev open and close the show, respectively. Those songs are "High Fidelity" by Costello, and "Continuous Trucks" by Mercury Rev. The show also features Negativland's "The Worst Programming Ever, Mind Jamming, A Report By Rex Everything, etc." Next is Iru Ekpunobi's "Comfort Noise." Writes Ekpunobi, "Comfort noise, or comfort tone, is synthetic background noise used in radio and wireless communications to fill the artificial silence in a transmission in which low volume levels are ignored by the transmitting device. In a system that disregards sound under a designated threshold, the absence of that sound must be reintroduced to ‘comfort’ the listening ear." The show also includes Chris Brookes' "The Moratorium." Chris Brookes is based in Newfoundland and has done a series of memorable radio pieces about the loss of the fishing industry and the impact of this loss on local lives and culture in Newfoundland. The Moratorium refers to a 1992 government decision to put a moratorium on fishing. This ended up putting 30,000 people in the fishing industry out of work and was not a successful policy for helping fish repopulate. Chris Brookes created this radio piece in collaboration with a dancer, and you can hear the rhythm and repetition and three part structure. - Described by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner.
Wave Farm is a non-profit arts organization driven by experimentation with broadcast media and the airwaves. A pioneer of the Transmission Arts genre, Wave Farm programs provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form. Major activities include the Wave Farm Artist Residency Program; Transmission Art Archive; WGXC 90.7-FM: Radio for Open Ears, a creative community radio station based in New Yorks Upper Hudson Valley; a Fiscal Sponsorship program; and the Media Arts Assistance Fund in partnership with NYSCA Electronic Media/Film. EVERGREEN EPISODE 131.
Elvis Costello, Negativland, Iru Ekpunobi, Chris Brookes, Mercury Rev
A show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio.
00:57:56
1
Aug. 10, 2023
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.