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.
This week tune in "filename:FUTURFAX" by Rachel Rosenthal (1990) and "What Is the Matter in Amy Glennon?" by Sheila Davies Sumner (1989), both introduced by Jess Speer. Plus the show finishes with Scanner's "Hardcore." First, like the best of dystopian fiction, "filename:FUTURFAX" (1990) at first takes us in with the premise that the future is a technological utopia where problems of hunger, deprivation, uncertainty, and unhappiness have been solved forever. The narrator receives a fax from a future civilization after a great crash, sent through a time warp, written and clarified by a computer operated by a team of scientists sending good wishes. Whispers of uncertainty slip in when you hear that art is no longer made after being deemed superfluous and subversive by the lawmakers (they do tell jokes, however). Recalling 1984 and Brave New World, the future civilization is founded on total technocratic control and scientific progress, having become de-deified and losing religion because they control all the natural functions formerly ascribed to mysterious divinities. And then moral and social decorum are maintained thanks to the implants (should we say that?). Soon its revealed that some people suffer incredible fits of boredom, and some, labeled deviants, even escape to the world outside the domed structures of the SSC (self-sufficient communities). These deviants have set up a parallel civilization, one that our scientist reports with great astonishment appears to worship the very environment, in spite of the great hardships imposed by the natural world and the ruins of 20th century civilization. Humanity, at this unknown future date, is reduced to a population of comfortable citizens living in an environment where every element, including themselves, is controlled, and a group eking out an existence and sacrificing themselves in the work of making amends with the natural world, often becoming sick or dying during cooperative clean-ups of the ruins. And then tune in "What Is the Matter in Amy Glennon?" by Sheila Davies Sumner (1989) also introduced by Jess Speer. In What is the Matter in Amy Glennon?, Sheila Davies Sumner showcases her interest in the connection between the physical and metaphysical, storytelling, science, and psychology, as well as her agility with words and quick wit. The piece simultaneously tells and constructs the story of Amy Glennon, whose body and mind have been separated by The Great Fathers of Science, as she reckons with her consciousness, relationship to the quantum, and the bitterness of self-knowledge, and transmutes it into a marriage of philosophy and science, and wisdom in the form of paper cups of hot coffee. The story is told alternatingly by a narrator and by Amy herself, accompanied by a chorus, and is worked and re-worked within itself in an auction-house whose auctioneer takes bids on the content, direction, and meaning of the text. Deeply philosophical, the piece is filled with rapid-fire confetti blasts of references to mythology, science, metaphysics, philosophers, theorists, artists, and subconscious symbolism, playfully hurrying the listener on in a delightful almost giddy pace towards the center of human and universal thought and experience. In its many transmutations, twists, and turns, the piece encourages the listener to reflect on storytelling, identity, the relationship between science and philosophy, and the very nature of being in both the physical and metaphysical senses. Some listeners may feel compelled to listen again and again to follow the various paths, references and trains of thoughts. The script of the piece can be read on the New American Radio archive. - Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2020/2021, Jess Speer. The show ends with with Scanner's "Hardcore" from his 1993 debut "Scanner 1" album. The British artist scanned cell phone signals into his work here.
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 081.
Rachel Rosenthal, Sheila Davies Sumner, Scanner
A show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio.
00:58:00
1
Aug. 11, 2022
Produced for Wave Farm in the Hudson Valley in New York.
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