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, 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.
Tune in today for two pop songs with radio themes, and two mythic radio art works. Kate Donovan's "The Bespoke Headpiece" is a radio myth; one that is imagined to date back millennia. The story has travelled orally through generations of those who have lived in locations where the Aurora Borealis reveals itself, and where some women could not only see the illuminated sky, but could also hear the phenomenon. As part of a coming of age ritual, girls would spend three nights alone with the Aurora night sky, wearing custom headdresses fashioned as receiving antennas, constructed of natural materials and designed to amplify the reception of sound. Folklore tells of this rite of passage, where reception was so acutely tuned that the young women alone in the night could hear voices of the deceased and the unborn. It is said that these voices provided guidance and support as the girls began their journey into adulthood. After that Steve Roden's "transmissions (voices of objects and skies)" was created for the exhibition "Transmissions From Space" at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum in 2005. The work was inspired by John Glenns first transmission from space. The source material was recordings of satellites by amateur astronomers from the 1960s through the 1980s that Roden processed and transformed electronically. Opening and closing the show are two pop songs with radio themes. Spiritualized's "Always Together With You" from the 2022 album "Everything Was Beautiful" opens the show. The band Glove's "Radio Out," from the 2022 album "Boom Nights," takes us out.
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 068.
Kate Donovan, Steve Roden, Spiritualized, Glove
A show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio.
00:58:30
1
May 12, 2022
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.
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