My horoscope says DO IT! I’m doing it! Some time back I shared news about a sound project I’ll be making for the Western Gallery here in Bellingham. Over the past 9 months however I’ve struggled to land on an idea for the sound element. Having something looping over and over was feeling sort of boring, annoying. Then I started thinking about streaming sound that was changing. Hmmmm, what well that’s just like RADIO! And have I not secretly wanted to be on the radio since I was a kid with my Sony cassette tape recorder? Well YES. I next wondered if there was a precedent for this idea, a radio art discipline? Heck yes there is. I’m reading up on it and it’s a rich, rich history. I’m especially inspired by KunstRadio’s manifesto that I will rewrite here:
http://www.kunstradio.at/TEXTS/manifesto.html
TOWARD A DEFINITION OF RADIO ART
Radio art is the use of radio as a medium for art
Radio happens in the place it is heard and not in the production studio.
Sound quality is secondary to conceptual originality.
Radio is almost always heard combined with other sounds - domestic, traffic, tv, phone calls, playing children etc.
Radio art is not sound art - nor is it music. Radio art is radio.
Sound art and music are not radio art just because they are broadcast on the radio.
Radio space is all the places where radio is heard.
Radio art is composed of sound objects experienced in radio space.
The radio of every listener determines the sound quality of a radio work.
Each listener hears their own final version of a work for radio combined with the ambient sound of their own space.
The radio artist knows that there is no way to control the experience of a radio work.
Radio art is not a combination of radio and art. Radio art is radio by artists.
The thing is that it doesn’t need to play anything all the time. Silence is sound. It gives us time to listen to the world around us. I feel like I’m falling in love. Now I’m writing a grant to get some seed funding. Stay tuned!