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 and Jess Speer. 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.
The theme today is scary stories. First we hear a classic radio theatre work from the 1940s, and then a re-telling of the tale, from the point of view of a radio listener, from the 1960s. Then we finish with what Orson Welles called, "the greatest single radio script ever written." First, tune in for a 1940s episode of the "Lights Out" radio show. This episode is "Chicken Heart," and it comes from Arch Oboler, who took over "Lights Out" from Wyllis Cooper, who started the program in the 1930s. "Lights Out" was known as the goriest of the early radio horror shows, toned down a bit when it moved to NBC in 1935. The "Chicken Heart" episode features a simple but effective "thump-thump" of an ever-growing chicken heart which, thanks to a scientific experiment gone wrong, threatens to engulf the entire world. Oboler story was inspired by a Chicago Tribune article about scientists keeping a chicken heart alive for a considerable period of time after its having been removed from the chicken. The episode is probably so well known because of the second work featured today, Bill Cosbys "Chicken Heart." Cosby is a convicted sexual predator, who once released a comedy track called "Spanish Fly" about how funny it is to use a date-rape drug on women before having sex with them. Here, he recounts listening to this episode of "Lights Out" as a seven-year-old. So his story does not match the original script, and focuses more on his reaction to the radio show, and what his parents do when they walk in on his radio listening experience. The final work included here today is the "Sorry, Wrong Number" episode of the "Supense" radio show from 1943. It is virtually a one-woman show, with Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Stevenson, an invalid who accidentally intercepts a phone call between two men plotting a murder. Mooreheads career ranged from playing the title characters mother in "Citizen Kane" to playing Endora on the TV show "Bewitched." In 2015, the original May 25, 1943 broadcast of "Sorry, Wrong Number" was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.
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. Each episode of this series is evergreen. Episode 039. THIS SHOW IS EVERGREEN, and is especially suited for late October.
Scary Stories
A show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio.
00:57:22
1
Oct. 21, 2021
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.
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