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 works from two artists who worked with New York City radio stations, Susan Stone from WBAI and Tony Schwartz from WNYC. First, "House with a View" by Stone. "House with a View" was created by American radio artist Susan Stone who has kindly contributed the piece, which is not widely available, to the Wave Farm Radio Art Archive. Stone had her start in radio at WBAI in NYC in 1979 producing a radio show called "Radio Schizophonia" with fellow radio artist Gregory Whitehead. She was involved for many years with Pacifica Radio KPFA-FM in Berkley California. Stone wrote to me about the process of creating House with a View, which was inspired by her short radio piece called Couch, which is also included in the Archive. You can actually hear clips of Couch and another of her shorts, Langue Etude, in the longer piece "House with a View" Stone writes, I wanted to play with the sonic construct of moving through rooms, sounding out what might have transpired within each one. At the time the tech-play was setting up long acetate tape loops, threaded through standing audio tape decks, the tape crisscrossing my studio like a cats cradle...This created a choral outcome through the chance operations of phrasing "- how one voice became many with timing variations, one sentence at a time. - Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2019/2020, Karen Werner. Then tune in "Favorite Sounds;" "How We Remember;" and "Music in Marble Halls" from Schwartz (1962-1970), also introduced by Werner. For over 30 years Schwartz produced weekly radio programs about sound for the NYC public radio station, WNYC. Schwartz also created records for Smithsonian folkways that feature his distinct style, described as part anthropological study, part hometown travelogue. Schwartz developed a portable tape recording set-up in the 195Os which enabled him to collect sounds outside the studio " on the streets and in his home. He edits and presents the pieces in a distinct way. Plus, Schwartz is very likable; a tenderness, humor, curiosity, and intimacy come through in his pieces. A poignant detail is that he was agoraphobic and rarely traveled outside his NYC neighborhood. His recordings create an expansive sonic world. The first of these three pieces by Schwartz is called "Favorite Sounds" and was recorded at the Jewish Guild for the Blind in New York City in 1963. The second features the voices of New York City teenagers, and is called "How We Remember" and is from 1970. And the third piece in this selection is about the pleasures of sound called "Music in Marble Halls," created in 1962. The first two pieces are from the Library of Congress Tony Schwartz collection: https://www.loc.gov/rr/record/schwartzrecordings.html. The third piece is from Schwartzs Folkways album, "You're Stepping on My Shadow, Sound Stories of NYC." These are also introduced 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 112
Susan Stone, Tony Schwartz
A show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio.
00:58:00
1
March 30, 2023
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.
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