“True ghost stories and paranormal experiences are gathered through individual conversations, spirit communication attempts, telephone messages, radio technology experiments, found audio clips, social media sound fragments… What I have discovered is that ghosts are everywhere, and disembodied individuals and energies seem to be present in increasing numbers. Belief systems and skepticism varies as widely as the personalities I encounter.

Ultimately the material collected is recomposed into an audio installation that drifts between experimental music composition, cut up audio docudrama, and ghost hunt. Seven low-wattage fm transmitters will be installed throughout the deCordova Museum. Visitors to the museum will be able to pick up a radio from the front desk & use it to seek out the transmissions throughout the building. The stories become ghosts themselves, and by physically searching through space, invisible fragments are revealed.”

Ven Voisey is a multi-disciplinary artist living in North Adams, MA. Through sound compositions, installations, drawings and photographs, Voisey shifts perceptions of common objects and routines by presenting them in a new context, thus questioning ideas of “practicality” and “faith” in constructs of the familiar.

Born in Richmond, CA, Voisey grew up in the East Bay Area of Northern California. In 2000, he received a BA from San Francisco State University in a self-designed major combining Humanities, Electronic music , Film, and Conceptual Art. For several years, he continued his education outside of school by working, touring and collaborating with kinetic sculpture and installation collective Amorphic Robot Works, building machines, learning fundamental electronics, and composing music. In 2003, Voisey moved to North Adams, MA where he has been worked with a variety of arts organizations (MASS MoCA, MCLA Gallery 51, Clark Art Institute, Images Cinema…) and making his own work in his studio. In 2010 he was Artist-in-Residence at the Berkshire Museum and was awarded the Individual Artist grant from Local Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire. His work will be included in the 2012 deCordova Biennial at deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park.

Range uses the criteria found in proprietary mapping software that plots radio station coverage areas to analyze the importance of place for radio broadcasts. This software takes into account transmitter power, antenna height, frequency, antenna pattern, and etc. Commercial and community stations use this data to determine potential listeners.

The coverage areas are defined as:

• Local: areas with very clear reception
• Distant: areas with weak signal
• Fringe: areas with very weak or no signal

A station’s signal strength broadly delimits that station’s territories. These territories further impact policy (i.e. FCC regulation, spectrum licensing), station-specific power (i.e. advertising, tower-space rentals), and public affairs (i.e. community programming, emergency alert systems). Range seeks to challenge these issues of signal accessibility, and question radio’s role as a distribution tool.

Radius has commissioned three artists to create audio works for broadcast that point to issues of proximity in the event of radio transmission.

Local: Emilie Mouchous & Andrea-Jane Cornell (January 2012)

Distant: Damon Loren Baker (February 2012)

Fringe: Rob Ray (March 2012)

Radius is an experimental radio broadcast platform based in Chicago, IL, USA. The goal is to support work that engages the tonal and public spaces of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Radius features a new project semi-monthly with statements by artists who use radio as a primary element in their work. Radius provides artists with live and experimental formats in radio programming.

CT Room is a collage of field recordings taken from various online video chat rooms and instant messenger services. In many of the recordings, the subjects that chose to type responses instead of speak, were unaware that they had left their computer microphones on. In some of these cases, the computer was left on even after the person had stopped chatting. Hart was able to record the sounds of these seemingly empty spaces and the personal conversations that would take place outside the designated chat space.

The compiled recorded sounds have been processed only minimally and arranged into a compositional structure. All sounds used are as recorded, complete with defects due to bit rate/streaming. Once arranged apart from the accompanying visual aspects, the sounds become abstracted from their original context and open up to interpretation. The sounds take on a sinister tone and speak to a certain kind of panopticism; a voyeurism where those being watched are perhaps only subconsciously aware that they are potentially being observed by someone else.

Imaginary Forces (Anthoney J Hart, b. Hastings, England 1979) is a London-based electronic music composer. His electronic music trends towards noise music, and is often self released. His music is also released on the label Ohm Resistance and his own label, Sleep Codes. Hart’s early electronic dance music have now moved into a more freeform abstract compositional structure drawing heavily from the early electronic masters as well as literary references, most notably J G Ballard. Using an innovative approach he reduces electronic music to its component elements, deconstructing it, and turning it into something far more challenging.

Alternative versions of CT Room are available on CDr here.

Radius is an experimental radio broadcast platform based in Chicago, IL, USA. The goal is to support work that engages the tonal and public spaces of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Radius features a new project semi-monthly with statements by artists who use radio as a primary element in their work. Radius provides artists with live and experimental formats in radio programming.

Bits & Pieces lures the listener into an ear-catching, evocative sonic terrain, an acoustic metaphor of current political and economic crises. At first impression Bits & Pieces seems only like a haphazard accumulation of static noise, dirt, and interference on the listener’s radio, but the radiophonic work soon turns into the precise acoustic image of a protagonist’s footsteps on a brittle, fragile, inconsistent surface: literally and conceptually walking on ‘breaking ground’, audibly de-constructing, re-evaluating, tearing, revising and editing his world.

This conceptual work, which focuses on the destructive process of ‘progress’, was made especially for radio transmission on Radius.

Sound sculptor and media artist Timo Kahlen (born 1966), nominated for the German national “Sound Art Prize” (“Deutscher Klangkunst-Preis”) in 2006, has presented his experimental media work in more than 90 solo and group exhibitions since the mid-1980s. Exhibitions include “Tonspur expanded: The Loudspeaker” (Vienna 2011), the “60×60” project (New York 2009), “MANIFESTA 7” (Italy 2008), “Sound Art 2006” (Marl, Cologne, Duisburg), “Wireless Experience” (Helsinki 2004), “Zeitskulptur” (Linz 1997) and “Timo Kahlen: Works with Wind”, which inaugurated the Kunst-Werke Berlin in 1991. Timo Kahlen lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Radius is an experimental radio broadcast platform based in Chicago, IL, USA. The goal is to support work that engages the tonal and public spaces of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radius features a new project semi-monthly with statements by artists who use radio as a primary element in their work. Radius provides artists with live and experimental formats in radio programming.

Youtube (YT) is an archive. An archive for not only movies and pictures, but also for music. That is why it is used, not only as a video platform, but in the same amount as a music platform. As a music archive, YT contains composed music, but also sounds, tones, voices and noises.

The existing music on YT can be divided into music, recorded in the non-network world (such as a record, as a video documentation of a performance or a film and television production) and has been uploaded then on YT, and music that comes from the network context. The spectrum of the archived documents is ranging from anthropological and ethnological, more scientific recordings of classical music, to popular and avant-garde music. The documentation and publications of their own personal play or song, to which I also count producing recitations or how to’s, are lined up in the sphere of publishing of all kinds of artistic performing forms of action.

For the ‘Radio Arts Space’ by radioCona, curatingyoutube.net has decided to introduce the enormous musical and tonal variety of the network archive ‘Youtube’ and not to depict a specific art-Canon. In addition to this, curatingyoutube.net has selected some subjects, which it considers as exemplary and compiled the corresponding videos to a video grid. These grids serve curatingyoutube.net as an instrument / playlist / sound bank, from which it selects videos or music live and intuitively. The music / sound pieces can be played in parallel, can be mixed, are lined up and repeated. The Grids are presented with one index page to open each one parallel in a single page. Different variants can arise new perspectives, interpretations and sound journeys.

Radio Arts Space

dec 2011: broadcast and stream of selection sound art and radio art works in the form of curated exhibition. The exhibition will at the same time occupy the radio frequencies and audio streams of international partners. The broadcast will be constituted as a gallery space with a curated exhibition delineated by the curators’ collection of selected sound art and radio art works and featuring works selected through open call.

Gregory Chatonsky (b. Paris, living in Montreal and Paris) holds a multimedia advanced degree from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and a Masters in philosophy from the Sorbonne. Chatonsky’s body of work, including interactive installations, networked and urban devices, photographs and sculptures, speaks to the relationship between technologies and affectivity, flows that define our time to create new forms of fiction. In 1994, Chatonsky founded the net.art collective incident.net.

Radius is an experimental radio broadcast platform based in Chicago, IL, USA. The goal is to support work that engages the tonal and public spaces of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radius features a new project semi-monthly with statements by artists who use radio as a primary element in their work. Radius provides artists with live and experimental formats in radio programming.

Invisible Fields brings together over a dozen internationally known artists, designers and scientists to explore the radio spectrum - the invisible environment that underpins contemporary technology. Co-curated by José Luis de Vicente and Honor Harger, the show includes Timo Arnall (BERG), Thomas Ashcraft, Matthew Biederman, Anthony DeVincenzi (MIT Media Lab), Diego Diaz and Clara Boj, Joyce Hinterding, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Trevor Paglen, Job Ramos, Semiconductor, Luthiers Drapaires, and Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits (RIXC).

Invisible Fields explores how our understanding of our world and our cosmos has been transformed by the study of radio waves. With the invention of telecommunication technology at the end of the 19th century, the radio spectrum became a tool for rethinking the world we live in. Radio collapsed geographical distance, crossed borders and cultures, became a powerful catalyst for commerce and enabled scientists to study the cosmos in entirely new ways. Yet whilst the radio spectrum is the invisible infrastructure that enables the technologies of information and communication, most people are unaware of the way it works, how it is managed, and how it is has shaped our understanding of our lived environment.

Invisible Fields aims to shine a light on this enigmatic landscape. The exhibition differs from past explorations of these topics, in that it is conceived as an interdisciplinary blend of social-cultural analysis, science communication, and artistic practice.

More than a linear, historical narration of the evolution of spectrum technologies, Invisible Fields can best be understood as an “observatory”, which enables visitors to perceive the radio spectrum. It sets out the spectrum as a physical space, invisible but present, a terrain that can be studied, mapped, surveyed and explored. It is an environment made of signals and waves from nature, and from us. Its topography is formed of waves of different scales, from tiny emissions given off by domestic objects to vast emissions made by distant astronomical phenomena. It’s made up of signals that are very familiar, such as television and radio, and signals which are esoteric and enigmatic. It is an ecology that has public spaces – wireless internet and amateur radio – and secret spaces – coded military transmissions and clandestine signals.

Following on from pioneers such as John Cage, Alvin Lucier and Pauline Oliveros, contemporary artists such as Thomas Ashcraft, Semiconductor and Joyce Hinterding create powerful works that allow us to understand the radio spectrum as an extension of the natural world.

Sitting alongside their almost Emersonian understanding of radio as nature, is recent work in the field of architecture, design and urbanism, which expands the notion of urban space into the invisible realm of the spectrum. “Hertzian space”, a term coined by designers, Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby, is defined by our transmissions of radio, television, wireless internet, GPS data and mobile phone signals. It is a space interrogated by artists and designers such as Timo Arnall from the BERG group in London, and Clara Boj and Diego Diaz who create clever visualisations of the presence of waves in our daily life.
Elsewhere in the show, artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s monumental tribute to the radio dial, enables us to physically move through radio transmissions, giving us a visceral encounter with our ethereal cultural surroundings. And experimental geographer and artist, Trevor Paglen and artist-activists, RIXC, shed light on the dark zones of the spectral landscape.

Invisible Fields is not only concerned with the topology of the radio landscape, but rather the socio-political activities that take place within it. Alongside the artworks in the show are operational workshops, which remind us that our position with the architecture of the spectrum is far from being that of a passive observer. As such, the exhibition space hosts intensive activity for a wide variety of audiences, with workshops on Sunday mornings, and a complete education programme offered to schools.

Taken together the works in Invisible Fields make the intangible materiality of the electromagnetic spectrum visible and audible. They open up the Hertzian space around us, and above us, to our senses. The visions of artists, the solutions of designers, and the experiments of scientists give us the tools we need to create our own mental maps of this profoundly influential terrain.

Credits

Organized by Arts Santa Mònica
Curated by: Honor Harger and José Luis de Vicente
Assisted by: Irma Vilà
Produced by Arts Santa Mònica, in association with Lighthouse.

In conjunction with:

British Council
Bureau du Quebec, Barcelone | Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec
Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación, Gijon
Bòlit, Centre d’Art Contemporani, Girona

We acknowledge the support of: Proyecto PARTNeR Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC), Departament d’Astronomia I Meteorologia-Universitat de Barcelona, Escola Tècnica Superior d’Enginyeria de Telecomunicació de Barcelona-Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

This exhibition brings together three pioneers of sound art, Max Eastley (born 1944, UK), Takehisa Kosugi (born 1938, Japan) and Walter Marchetti (born 1931, Italy). Each artist has developed a distinct approach to the problem of representing immateriality, while sharing a lightness of touch, approaching sound with patience, restraint and fidelity. As well as presenting new and historic work, the exhibition will comprise live performance, and a selection of material from the artists’ substantial archives.

Max Eastley is an artist and musician whose sound sculptures play on a balance between the natural environment and human intervention. His musical collaborations include the 1975 album New And Rediscovered Musical Instruments with David Toop, produced by Brian Eno. His response to the interior of Raven Row will be a meditation on the 18th century Picturesque, achieved with 21st century technology and a ‘Bergsonian’ approach to time.

Takehisa Kosugi is a major figure in modernist sound art. In the early 1960s his event pieces were realised by Fluxus in Europe and the USA. Kosugi pioneered the development of Japanese experimental music with Group ONGAKU and the Taj Mahal Travellers. Since 1977 he has been a composer/ performer at Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and became its Music Director in 1995. As well as archival material, Kosugi will present a number of works including the sound installation Mano-Dharma, electronic, 1967/2011.

Walter Marchetti was a founder member of ZAJ, a recalcitrant Mediterranean parallel to Fluxus, which in the 1960s produced action-music-performances, anarchic gags, and elegant assaults on the music establishment. Marchetti befriended John Cage in 1958, and went on to collaborate with him on a number of projects. His work has often focused on the grand piano — for more than 50 years he has been preparing them like a chef intent on marinating sound. Two of Marchetti’s pianos, alongside works from Emanuele Carcano’s collection, will be exhibited.

Alongside these positions, Resonance104.4fm will be installed at Raven Row for the duration of the exhibition, broadcasting, and hosting workshops and live events, as well as presenting an ‘overhung’ sound installation — the ‘Resonance Open’ — with contributions solicited from local and international sound artists.

The exhibition is curated by Ed Baxter, director of Resonance104.4fm.

Orbitando Satélites proposes an exercise in the visualisation and investigation of these “rarae aves” that operate in habitually imperceptible frequencies and distances. We listen to them with DIY antenas and radios, showing how to locate them and observe them with free hardware and software.

In the tradition of the independent groups involved in the creation of free/libre infrastructures the meeting unites amateurs and experts, from various countries and cultures, to develop a declaration which poetically sketches this occult ring that surrounds us.

Trying to invert the logic of the panopticon, we observe the satellites that are observing us, exploring their political dimensions as an opaque system of control as well as a potentially liberating force. Using visualisation and play techniques we investigate the poetics of satellites, developing new astrologies and detailed mythologies.

And, finally, we design our own communications / observation satellite, to be launched in July 2011 by balloon, around the same time as the inauguration which will visualise our investigation.

Some key themes and topics:

▪ Satélites and micro-satélites.
▪ Dispositives of power y contra-power.
▪ Listening to satélites. Satellite Hacking,
▪ The Astrology y Astronomy of satélites
▪ Celestial voices, Satelite soundart
▪ Design of open source satelite with radio & wimax
▪ Estratoferic baloons, Drones and Kites
▪ Arduino in space.
▪ Space politics.
▪ Satélite Tracking and Radiofrequencies
▪ GNU/Radio USRP Software Defined Radio
▪ Calculating & charting celestial mechanics
▪ Orbital Dreams
▪ ……

With:

▪ Politics and Poetics of satélites. MSST, Joanna Griffin, Reni Hoffmuller…
▪ de/Construction of a satélite. David Pello
▪ Listening, Spotting y Sousveillance. Alejo Duque

The audio content consists of filtered radio signals, culled from various web streams from the Internet. These signals are being passed through many “band pass filters”, a type of equalizer that allows a small range of frequencies through while attenuating frequencies outside of this range. In effect, most of the audio signal is “erased” except for a narrow stratum of frequency material. This work highlights small, hidden musical moments that are occurring on radio, but are usually rendered inaudible by other elements in the sound.

Although the Internet can bridge disparate communities, our experience on the web is of a customized landscape, with content tailored to our ideological views, our shopping behaviors, our socio-economic demographics, etc.. Spectral Quartet literally re-unites these voices into a singularized, aestheticized, quiet moment.

Spectral Quartet is a 2010 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for its Turbulence web site. It was supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

BIOGRAPHY

Woody Sullender is an artist currently based in Brooklyn, NY, working primarily in music and audio media. Over the past few years, he has emerged as a pre-eminent experimental banjo performer, playing with and against the cultural baggage of the instrument. More recent work focuses on “erasing” existing audio by removing most of the frequencies from a recording via band-pass filters. This has manifested in a range of media from a lathe-cut record of a diminished “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to an FM broadcast of erased radio stations. Among other activities, he teaches new media in the New York area and hosts a weekly radio show on WFMU.