Conference review: Linda O'Keeffe
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on June 21, 2005 08:34 PM | Comments (4)

The third Deep Wireless symposium took place in the Drake hotel in Toronto this year. Having not attended the other two I cannot make a comparison on quality; I can only comment on how good I thought this one was, and that I will definitely be attending the next.

During the symposium, topics covered included the decline of radio as medium for sound art, the new medium of Internet radio, various methods of making docudrama pieces, interviewing skills, and new technologies around for producing sounds. The speakers ranged from radio producers from the CBC to documentarians, sound artists, and performers. The quality of speakers was fantastic. All of the work that was played was stunning in its range and quality; the conception behind all of the work used the notion of storytelling via audio soundscapes, which captured the most emotive, sometimes comic, sometimes heartbreaking sounds I have ever heard. Having been raised in a visual culture, even though I myself am a sound artist, it is difficult to find a variety of sound work that captures the imagination.

During the whole weekend the talks were being broadcast from the Drake on the several international radio stations and on web radio. If you could not attend the symposium personally, you could always listen in -- something that would not be done for any other art event.

At the Eric Leonardson Workshop, CKUT 90.3fm Producer Caroline Kunzley plays the springboard.

On the Monday after the symposium, a day-long workshop was organised by Eric Leonardson and Chris Brookes, two established people in their fields. First was Leonardson, a musician who creates his own instruments and has been playing around the world with them since the seventies; his springboard instrument, made from wood, metal springs, rubber and a walker, emits haunting sounds via contact microphones embedded in the wood. He uses a double bass bow to play on the springs and rubber bands, but he has a collection of various tools one would never think of to produce music. He has worked in theatre, been recorded on various albums with acclaimed composers and instrumentalists, and also recently worked on a movie doing the sound design. To check out more of his work you can go online at www.ericleonardson.org.

Deep Wireless 2
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on June 19, 2005 04:41 PM | Comments (2)

On the radio in Boston today, I'm playing this new (as of April) and most excellent radio art comp called Deep Wireless 2. Nadene graciously posted much of it in MP3 form on the Deep Wireless site and also here in this blog. Hear it out if you haven't yet.

Wistful in Florida
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on June 8, 2005 02:32 AM | Comments (0)

So I don't even get to process this year's Radio Without Boundaries before I'm rushed off to Florida again to deal with a mini-crisis at work. Fortunately I still have images of Toronto back in my head, and I have my recorder and some conference notes to fall back on.

Emmanuel Madan's post-conference performance last Sunday night
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on June 5, 2005 07:51 PM | Comments (1)

I mustered the energy to attend the final performance, partly because I had more blogging to do and was too lazy to leave my post behind Darren's mixing board. It was a good decision, regardless of how much thought I put into it, because Emmanuel's performance is something I needed to hear. Culled from recordings of talk radio during a post-9/11 road trip in rural America, and projected through an unidentified number of cheap car audio speakers that ran wired from the board to the hands of willing audience members, the various news reporters, bleeding hearts, and right-wing narcissistic crazies (the most relevant examples of our new world) spun an insightful narrative via Emmanuel's mixing and enhanced the impact and dynamics of the field recordings and found sounds that were arranged, shifted, then pumped through Darren's unique 8-speaker output. While the voiceless sounds through the main speakers fit the playful experimental audio context also demonstrated during the Friday and Saturday night performances, the audience-handled voices best summarized what I thought to be the main takeaway from the conference: every sound piece, no matter how abstract, is driven by narrative, either created through the use of voices or represented by sound, and it's up to the producer to allow that narrative to grow within the minds of the audience. Emmanuel gave center stage to the voices -- makes sense, considering the time he invested in collecting them -- and I had my own interpretation of that particular narrative even before the performance started (in short: the media's reaction to 9/11 in the U.S. was marked by polarized opinion, unchecked emotion, shortsightedness). But the non-vocal sounds made this piece unique for me, from buzzing to undulating bass tones to static, and tied everything together quite nicely.

Since all my batteries were dead, this performance is in my head. No audio or pics, save for the photo I "borrowed" from the Deep Wireless site (hope that's OK...).

Conference Feedback: Wayne MacPhail
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on June 1, 2005 09:25 PM | Comments (3)

Wayne MacPhail, one of Canada's first cyberjournalists, was a participant at this year's Radio Without Boundaries conference. You can learn more about Wayne here. Here's what Wayne thought about this year's conference:

Audio/radio art -- sites of interest
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on May 31, 2005 05:47 PM | Comments (3)

Nadene was just asked if there are any websites to those not so familiar with radio art, and this was her response. If you have any sites to add to the list, comment on this post:

Anna takes us out: Radio Resistance, Radio Play
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on May 29, 2005 10:25 PM | Comments (0)

I can't think of anyone better to wrap up (in essence) the conference than Anna Friz, proprietor of the Harvey Christ Radio Hour and frequent performer this weekend as a member of the Deep Wireless Radio Theatre Performance troupe. She's an eloquent speaker and a longtime student and now teacher in traditional and experimental radio transmissions. And she's running a pirate radio station, Spidona, out of this very hotel (actually, she refers to herself as a "squatter", in that she grabs a section of the radio frequency that no one uses). She's an artist in residence here, hanging out with ghosts and making random noises for the neighborhood to hear at 87.7 and 108 FM. Anna is bold in her work in that she doesn't often know who is hearing her transmissions, taking solace in the fact that someone may randomly stumble upon it, or not. So if you're in Anna's neighborhood -- and you may never know what neighborhood Anna is hanging out in, or where she's at -- consider yourself lucky.

Wadhams and Brookes unite: Not Seen Not Heard
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Is conveying information what radio does best? Chris Brookes, on the left, who according to Nadene is the only true independent producer in Canada because he is the only producer able to support himself financially, doesn't think so, because everything comes by the ear/mind once. And then it's gone. Did you know that the sense of hearing is the first that we acquire in the womb? Chris says so, and that sound develops the imagination first, creating imagery, and for some unfortunate reason we've historical linked radio with delivery of facts. And in a radio story, the interviewer and an interviewee play an equal part in creating imagery. The interviewer fishes for details, the interviewee paints for the interviewer, and the process continues until a group of pictures, like frames in a film, is created. Then the producer merely displays the fruits of that discourse. Steve Wadhams, who by default is on the right, and not by default has been a producer for the CBC for 31 years, says those pictures need to flow in the same direction in order to be effective, to make that story lodge in the listener's brain and linger. It's the interviewer's job to make sure the pictures the interviewee is painting are pointing the same way.

Narrative in sound/radio art: the Deep Wireless Panel
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The panel, from blurred left to blurrier right: Milena Droumeva, Geoff Siskind, Dragan Todorovic, and Yves Daoust. These four artists created sound works commissioned by the CBC's excellent Outfront program specifically to document Deep Wireless. These works were aired the past two nights here at the Radio Theatre performances. Outfront is a personal documentary series that puts a mic in the hands of everyday folks with a story to tell (ahhh, most Transom-like) -- 15 minutes a day, four days a week, approximately 62,000 listeners a day. It's wonderful that this wonderful program still thrives and is supported, and it was most excellent that Neil Sandell of Outfront showed up here to introduce the artists.

So the big question from this panel discussion was, is narrative necessary in radio art? It's a broadly sweeping question that brought forth a lot of other questions, as in which sound elements create narrative, how subtle or blunt should narrative be, how can narrative NOT be present?

The panel reaction was broad as a result. Some perspective? Geoff said that he likes having something to hang on to, to take away, while he does something else; it grounds the listener while still taking them in interesting places. Dragan thinks narrative is any any piece whether you want it or not. Since it's there, you need to control it -- take care of it -- because the listener will look for a narrative regardless of what the producer does with it.

I think everyone agreed the question wasn't answered, and they wouldn't answer it anytime soon. What do you think? Comments welcome.

LIsten to my live recording of a segment of what Yves did for Outfront -- ditto for what Geoff did.

Kunstradio show-and-tell: Radio Art is a Multi-Channel Experience
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Elisabeth Zimmermann seems to be quite cool. Powerpoint presentations on Sunday mornings are, however, not so cool. But she was talking about Kunstradio, which is definitely one of the most excellent sites I've recently been turned on to, through which she produces a weekly sound art program called Kunstradio - Radiokunst. Well, it wasn't powerpoint, but we did get walked through the site page by page. So I'm not feeling the power yet, but you can feel it by checking out the range of sounds on the Kunstradio site.

Oh Monstrous Voice Like Mine
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Gregory Whitehead. Not a myth. Makes great radio. Makes other people embarass themselves for his entertainment and the entertainment of others. Administers scream therapy to his audience.

Listen, listen again, yes.

Three is implied
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I can't remember where I got some of this stuff, so consider this a MP3 sampler, in chronological order according to yesterday's proceedings:

One

Two

Four

Three may never come.

I'm also including a clip from Dr. Lidia's presentation yesterday, a production by the Radio Educacion group, I believe. So go back to that posting.

Donut wars
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So I didn't follow the whole conversation, but I'm guessing the gist is this: Victoria Fenner is angry because she didn't get a donut at her hotel breakfast bar. Then I learned that Tim Hortons runs the donut world in Canada, and has already taken over West Virginia and certain other parts of the eastern U.S. Victoria thinks Tim Hortons would run Dunkin' Donuts out of Boston. Krispy Kreme already failed in wresting the Bostonian donut-eating community, but maybe a donut shop named after a local semi-lengendary drunken hockey player would do it. Cam Neely? An ex-Bruin, a bruiser, and he played Sea Bass in that Dumb and Dumber movie. That's star power.

Someone commented last night, on the way back from the bar, that this is the tastiest-looking collection of dish soap in the modern world.

How you can be a part of the conference if you aren't here
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on May 28, 2005 10:32 PM | Comments (0)

CKLN radio's web-stream of the conference is at http://141.117.225.8:8000

The schedule is on the Deep Wireless web-site
(http://www.deepwireless.ca).

Thanks to CKLN - the first community radio station in Toronto
(http://ckln.fm), the Drake hotel and free103point9 for making this
possible.

Redone: Sights from the conference site
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This looked fine in my Safari browser when I originally posted it, but looking at it today on PC = no good overlapping pictures. Fixed.

The James and Darren Show: Maintaining the Creative Frontier
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The last session of the day. All the coffee is gone, and so is most of the fruit. What's left? A bit of discussion on the history of radio, specifically experimental radio, in Canada. Yes, we're backwards radio folks who use history lessons to wake us up.

James Roy (Area Executive Producer, Radio Drama, CBC) started and Darren Copeland (Artistic Director, New Adventures in Sound Art) followed up with a relationship between the experimental radio past and present. For me, this was an interesting twist on what Helen just told us, that radio had no history. From what James and Darren say, there is a history, and this history is carried on through the years of radio artists making radio, other people hearing it and feeling the inspiration to create their own programs. (It may be significant to note that James and Darren live in Canada, and Helen in the U.S., if that creates some context.)

Helen said this: Radio Art in America
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Helen started New American Radio in 1985 as a program that employed several aesthetics and styles -- playing experimental radio and musical works by artists from Negativland to Diamanda Galas. For us, Helen played some work by Terry Allen that melds interviews with music in a compelling fashion -- a Vietnam vet, a young mother from Tijuana. The kicker was called "Audiographs: Sounds from the Tenderloin", which chronicled the words of homeless people in San Francisco, outside the production studio, people who normally were never heard on the air. All of this work needs a place, and at one point the radio waves were the primary place, other than hard-copy media with poor distribution.

Dr. Lidia brings cultural radio from Mexico to Canada: The International Biennale of Radio
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Dr. Lidia Camacho has been affiliated with Radio Educacion in Mexico since 1984. When she took over as general manager, not only did she continue RE's work to greatly expand the development of cultural radio in Mexico, but she founded and still serves as the director of the International Biennale of Radio in Mexico, a celebration every two years of sound art and compelling radio originating in Mexico.

Now if you're like me, you probably didn't think there was much sound art and radio art coming out of Mexico. But we are wrong. Or maybe I'm just wrong. The truth is that the Mexican government doesn't have the money to consistently fund radio art projects, so through the donations of various national institution, and the generous donations of time by speakers and teachers, the Biennial is not only able to exist, but to thrive. Lidia said the biennials have not only proven there are radio artists in Mexico, but that there is an alternative space, an audience with an interest in experimental works via radio transmission. In fact, the university radio station in Mexico City now produces 1/2 hour a week of sound art radio every week. And Radio Educacion broadcast 24 hours of erotic sound poetry this past April (and aired 24 hours international poetry last April).

Gregory gets down: The Play and the Thing
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Gregory Whitehead is a pro. He's calm and cool with a tousled head of hair. Or maybe that's the caffeine buzzing his follicles. Either way, he's rocking it, singing along with his pieces. In between his analyses of the way his radio world works, his radio adventures/news pieces come off as calm and cool and dynamic as Gregory in person. Few people can pull that off.

Speaking of hair, Gregory is, specifically referring to his piece "On One Lost Hair", even more specifically transporting the hair of Horatio Nelson. So where did that idea come from? Gregory says, "Don't neglect the opportunities that can come out of our own personal cultures." 'Nuff said.

Not Wired...Yet
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I'm looking at last night's post and realizing I didn't give a lot of detail, give justice to what went down. I plan to be more descriptive today. Gregory Whitehead is giving me static, making sure I'm doing my job before he commands the stage in a few minutes. Don't want to let him down. Victoria Fenner is providing the DJing skills to start things off today. Setting the mood. Nadene says that this conference is evolving into a weekend-long radio show, with the panel discussions and presentations to be segments of the show. Expect that idea to come to a head at next year's shindig.

Three flavors of potable water to help set the mood.

Oh, the Juicy Night
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Where do I begin? It was an amalgam of familiar unfamiliar sounds right from the start.

First let me note that free103point9 radio in Brooklyn, NY, in partnership with CKLN radio in Toronto, is webcasting this weekend's proceedings, including tonight's performance and all day tomorrow and Saturday. So thanks to them.

We descended into the depths of the Drake to the performance/conference room, which thankfully features a bar stocked with fine beers and liquors (not that we needed any incentive to ingest what was to come), and were led into a world of sound by the humble narrator, piped through a wicked 8-channel spatialized speaker system for pure auditory delight.

We heard excellent works by Tamara Albaitis, Yves Daoust, Milena Droumeva, and Evalyn Perry, and the Radio Theatre Performance Ensemble jumped onstage to combine various musical instruments with vocals (some straight narration, some through effects) to create compelling radioscapes, and somewhere in there was a STELLAR electroacoustic performance by Eric Leonardson on his homemade instruments. I will not lie -- some of the pieces blended together because I either was wandering around the room or not paying attention to who did what. But it was all part of the night, and it was a great one. I definitely picked out a short piece by Darren Copeland called They're Trying to Save Themselves, which I've heard before courtesy of a compilation I received here two years ago and really, really enjoy.

The first portion of the night ended with a longer piece by Steve Wadhams called War Time Comes and Goes. It was gripping through its duration, even though it was considerably longer than the other pre-produced pieces. And when the story came to an end, all that remained was the sound of water piping through the building. And the crowd was silent. I think the water threw us off. But then we figured out where we were at, regained our composure, raised our heads and clapped hands.

But our wretched souls needed further cleansing, so we the audience bowed again and subsequently were blessed and/or cursed by the twisted mantras of the Harvey Christ Radio crew. Their new book and CD are coming out in a matter of weeks, but these fountains of sanctified schtick are to be experienced first-hand. It's never too late to be baptized.

Arrival, back then
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So I just arrived at the uber-funky Drake hotel, where Nadene and the rest of the crew are getting everything rolling and soon to be rocking, and I'm sitting next to the radio cabinet that Anna Friz lovingly filled with drone-y experimental love ballads, if sound art is what pulls at your heart strings. I guess that's me. Combine the audio waves with the caffiene and sugar that I just soaked up, I'm feeling like I'm in my element. I see Julie Shapiro of the Third Coast Festival sauntering in from the gorgeous Toronto night, so I know this radio party will be rocking. The Around Radio roadmovies by Chantal Dumas et al are on display on a nearby Mac. Soon we'll have radio performances to warm our hearts. Radio love is in the air. Time to grab some night air before the action starts.

Busy-ness leading up to conference
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on May 24, 2005 11:02 PM | Comments (2)

I'm sure I'm like others in that I'm hurrying to finish up work before the conference (and hope others have not suffered a similar fate as I have, as to come back to my apartment from two weeks of working out-of-state to discover my bathroom had been ripped apart and a thick layer of marble dust coating most all of my personal belongings -- don't ask), and much thanks to Nadene for posting all that wonderful audio for us to sink our ears into, in anticipation of a complete immersion during the conference weekend.

Deep Wireless on the Air in May (part 2)
Posted by Nadene Theriault-Copeland on May 23, 2005 03:40 PM | Comments (2)

Recipe for a celebration of creativity on the airwaves: send out a call for new works, make a compilation CD, get it on the airwaves and encourage more people to help with the celebration by playing, listening and creating too...

And we are getting a tremendous response from community radio stations across North America and quite a few from Europe as well in doing just that. Along with playing the CD, there are programmers that have created space for live performances of radio art including Les Arts et Les Autres on Radio-Canada, The Audible Woman on CIUT-FM, as well as Why Not?, Art on Air and Electric Storm / Missing Sense on CKLN-FM.

Deep Wireless on the Air in May (Part 1)
Posted by Nadene Theriault-Copeland on May 22, 2005 03:19 PM | Comments (2)

A conference and series of performances and installations just isn't enough to convey what it is we are trying to do with Deep Wireless - which is to celebrate, promote and support creativity on the airwaves. There must be radio to complete the agenda!

Inspiration
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on May 20, 2005 02:16 AM | Comments (0)

Just over a week before the big weekend, and I'm thinking back to my last visit to Toronto and how the experience changed me. Inspirational, yes, no doubt. Not just the audio and the ideas that came out at the conference. Yes, being in the presence of so many like minds is, if nothing else, reassuring. I came back to the states in May 2003 with plenty of unbridled energy to put toward something, so I created a new radio show. I may have had no idea what I was doing, or maybe I did (still plenty of evidence of either/or at www.bookofsfx.org), but it didn't matter -- radio is the medium where experimentation initially was the norm, and still should be the norm. I frequently make a mental reference to a presentation that weekend from Anna Friz, who fortunately is not only attending the conference this year, but will be presenting, about a microradio project she undertook where she would broadcast random wonders at various points in Toronto at random times late in the evening, probably co-opting some (unworthy) corporate broadcast signal, knowing she was only reaching a few (most likely confused) ears at a time. And being OK with that. (Anna -- sorry for butchering your reality -- my memory of your presentation is not what it should be, but I conveyed the essence, hopefully.)

Deep Wireless 2005 Radio Installations - a walk-through
Posted by Nadene Theriault-Copeland on May 19, 2005 05:01 AM | Comments (1)

What better way to draw attention to the creative use of radio than to have interactive and sound installations that either use radio technology or provide a unique listening space for radio art. The Drake hotel has provided space for the entire month of May for these installations as part of its ongoing art in public spaces exhibits.

Along with May's artist's exhibits throughout the hotel lobby, if you arrive anytime between 4 and 7pm you will be treated to "Radio Art Station," special in-house broadcasts that include radio art from around the world curated by Elisabeth Zimmerman (Kunstradio, Austria) and Darren Copeland (Artistic Director, New Adventures in Sound Art).

Negativland opened Deep Wireless 2005 on May 1st
Posted by Nadene Theriault-Copeland on May 17, 2005 04:34 AM | Comments (5)

It was Negativalnd's first ever stage performance of their Over the Edge radio show. Normally heard in the wee hours of a Thursday night via internet from KPFA in San Francisco, listeners on eastern shores got a chance to hear it Sunday night prime-time as the performance was aired in its entirety on CKLN 88.1 FM in Toronto. Audiences packed the Funky underground club at the Drake Hotel and comments are still resonating through the community two weeks after the show.

The show did not include any video or visual components, which is a notable fact for those that have attended other Negativland shows. But this was radio after all! Complimentary blindfolds were handed out to audience members at the Drake before the show, which was a nice way I thought of making a bridge between the live and radio audiences.

The radio show was titled "Its all in your head" and featured great sound bytes riffing on that name, including reiterations of their id cart "you're listening to it's all in your head FM." The content of the show was essentially a documentary-style investigation of the question of religion and the place of God in contemporary society. The documentary thrust came from found spoken word fragments that Don Joyce juxtaposed against each other in a thoughtful and considered manner by manipulating five cart machines in the performance. Riding under the spoken narrative was a musical underscoring managed faithfully by Mark Hosler and Peter Conheim that moved from noisy beeps to electronica to movie themes and pop music grooves to support and propel the narrative forward. Interspersed were "on-mic" segments where the humour and whit of the band was at its best.

One of my favourite one-liners from the show was "Monotheism in Stereo." And let's not forget the fact that David Byrne from The Talking Heads was in the audience and of course recognized a little of his own material in the show - and he liked it!

Over The Edge on stage was a tremendous achievement - a 90 minute sound documentary without visuals presented in a club for two kinds of audience, live and radio. It provided much depth, savvy, and humour. Let's hope that this is the beginning of a new chapter in Negativland's long and illustrious journey.

Peace, from under the sun
Posted by Justin Grotelueschen on May 14, 2005 09:34 PM | Comments (5)

My name's Justin, currently a native of Boston, MA, and I'm elated, enraptured, exhilarated, and all those other e-descriptors related to how I feel about attending the Radio Without Boundaries fest in two weeks. Even two weeks of Florida heat and beachiness can't distract me from the task at hand -- to get people talking about this wonderful meeting of ears in Canadia. I also attended this festival weekend two years ago, driving 10+ hours across New York state and the border to navigate a city completely foreign to me and most people I knew. So now I'm going to be back, with heightened expectations, no less, because I know Nadene and the team can put on a whale of a festival that will leave no lover of cutting-edge sound and thought disappointed. There's still time for you to make the trek yourself, but the point of this space is to bring the conference to the computer screen, to create a new medium for the sights, sounds, and conversations of the conference weekend, and to get *your* input as to what we the festival attendees should be commenting on. And we do look forward for your words. This is an open space for anyone who wants to jump in with their 2 or 3 or even 10 cents; some of the artists speaking and performing at the festival may even be here with us, giving their perspectives and impressions of how we can make radio and sound art a greater part of the popular world. So log on with us now, throughout the festival, and beyond, because the conversation rolls on as long as we can provide the steam...

It's the month of Deep Wireless, it's going on now, and it's time to talk about it.

With pale feet,
Justin G.

What is Radio? What is Radio Art?
Posted by Nadene Theriault-Copeland on May 12, 2005 04:05 PM | Comments (1)

What is radio? Is it simply a medium used to convey information and the mass promotion of popular culture? And if so, does this exclude any creative use of the medium? How about the many other forms of wireless technology? And what of radio art? What is it exactly? Shall we take the Kunstradio approach - ie. Art for Radio (Kunst radio; radio kunst)? What if it does not include drama or some reference to text or spoken word? Is it radio when it is pure sound?

These are only a few of the questions and topics that will be addressed at the Deep Wireless "Radio Without Boundaries" conference where the many potentials, boundaries and artist perspectives of radio will be explored through conference sessions by leading artists and producers in the field.