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.
"Sonnenlicht" from Scanner's 1999 album "Lauwarm Instrumentals" starts the show off. Then tune in "Avian Love" by Colin Black. Black writes, "Nikola Tesla was a brilliant engineer and eccentric who is considered to be the inventor of radio and alternating current. However, his greatest love was not technology, but a pigeon. 'Avian Love' is a sound composition for radio about Teslas love for his beloved pigeon that is full of electricity and electrifying feelings.
In New York, there is a sign at the corner of 6th Avenue and West 40th Street: 'Nikola Tesla Corner.' Between 1884 and 1943, the inventor stopped by here countless times to feed pigeons. Sometimes he took sick animals to the hotel where he lived permanently. There he nursed them back to health.
I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a women, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life. Her eyes shone more to Tesla than any invention he had developed in his lab."
Colin Black celebrates Tesla's dove in a composition of sounds and music.
Colin Black is a composer based in Australia. In 2003 he received the Prix Italia in the Radio Music category and in 2015 the Gold Award at the New York Festival. As part of his doctoral thesis at the University of Sydney, he researched the history of radiophonic sound art.
Credits: Produced, composed, recorded and mixed by Colin Black. Premire broadcast: Deutschlandradio Kultur, 6 January 2023. Recordings of electromagnetic fields: Tin Doic. Cognitive science advisor: Dayana Hristova. Production: Deutschlandfunk Kultur 2022. Length: 49'42. Special thanks to Marcus Gammel, Dayana Hristova, Tin Doic, Brane Zorman, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and CONA " institute for contemporary arts processing in Ljubljana. Avian Love by Colin Black is presented here courtesy of Deutschlandfunk Kultur.
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 112.
Scanner, Colin Black
A show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio.
00:58:10
1
March 23, 2023
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.
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