A friend will always appear at the same light, so you can write or draw on the radio to label it, and the lights are bright so you’ll know a friend has started listening from across the room.

Olinda’s hardware interface already joins the base unit with the friends module. By buying extra modules – or by making their own using the open interface – listeners can adapt their product over time, perhaps adding a remote control or recording. The Olinda pamphlet gives a few ideas of where this might be taken.

With thanks to blog.makezine.

At what point will common sense prevail, 26 sound works to be presented for a 5 year period, was commissioned by the Lewis Glucksman Gallery and curated by René Zechlin. It marks the second phase of a series of projects exploring the formation of opinion; it deals with how cognition occurs in conversation, discussion or debate.

Phelan produced the text for each of the sound pieces by participating in a range of online forums, from physics to religion. Subjects such as Commitment to truth, Youth isn’t a defense or Change is our only Commonality were inspired by previous ideas associated with the first phase of the overall formation of opinion project. These online discussions were led by the artist and then edited into scripts. Thirteen scripts were translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese or Kirundi; the others remain in English. Phelan recorded the reading of the texts by 26 different native speakers in the basement of The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, located in Cork City, Ireland. They were then recorded a second time; they had to listen to their own recording and repeat exactly what they heard the moment they heard it, thereby creating 26 regurgitated monologues.

At what point will common sense prevail is a challenging audio project that raises questions about private outlooks and current modes of personal and media communication.

Kunstradio – Radiokunst is presenting a selection of At what point will common sense prevail as part of its Curated by series.

…Electromagnetic fields are biologically active. Emitting from every electronic device, electromagnetic fields affect our body and the living nature. They interact with the natural emissions and intersect the boundaries of our planet. Invisible and omnipresent, electromagnetic fields have become ghosts of the modern world…

Entitled SPECTROPIA, this year’s festival - organised by RIXC - continues artistic explorations within the invisible space of electromagnetic spectrum surrounding us. The festival programme will feature 3-day SPECTROPIA exhibition with live events, workshops and artists presentations. It will be accompanied by international conference, performances, film and video screenings.

CALL for Proposals (for 3-day exhibition with live events): There are no restrictions, however, we would prefer work which is in process/ performative/ in action, requires artist’s assistance and possibly visitor’s participation/ action though the work can be demonstrated as well. Artists who think that their work fits the main theme of “spectropia”, are invited send a brief description of the work plus Links, and other relevant information,to: rixc [at] @rixc.lv and/or to Rasa Smite rasa [at] rixc.lv.

DEADLINE: April 21, 2008

RIXC, Centre for New Media Culture
11. Novembra krastmala 35-201
Riga, LV 1050
LATVIA

The print journal, Acoustic Space is a forum for net.radio, sound art and creative explorations in the networked electro-acoustic environments. Now in its 7th edition, Acoustic Space - SPECTROPIA issue investigates the rapid transformation of the usage of the radio frequency spectrum that we are witnessing in the 21st century. It doesn’t refer only to a quantitative increase in mobile, satellite and wireless networks, locative and pervasive media, but also to a qualitative shift in the way people communicate and the way spectrum is used in arts, education, science and commerce. The recent scientific research and artistic explorations of electromagnetic (EM) spectrum will be published in this issue, in order to introduce which chances and risks this tranformation process bears for artists and the populations at large.

For the first time, Acoustic Space journal will come out as ‘peer review’ (refereeing) publication. It will be published by the MPLab (Art Research Lab) of Liepaja University in collaboration with the RIXC, The Center for New Media Culture in Riga, Latvia.

Therefore, the publication will contain 2 main sections:

Section 1 - RESEARCH texts (’academic style’ writings with references, etc.)
Section 2 - ARTISTIC abstracts: ideas, concepts, pictures (this part will include mainly artists’ proposals for upcoming Spectropia festival exhibition - open-call is announced, deadline: April 21, 2008)

DEADLINES:

Deadline for submissions: May 19, 2008 - for completed research texts.
(For abstracts - April 21, 2007)

We encourage you to submit abstracts first. Proposals and inquiries regarding submissions should be made to Rasa Smite: rasa [at] rixc.lv

The RESEARCH texts should consist of 12000 - 15000 characters (i.e. 8 pages A4, 12 pt) + references.
(the ARTISTIC abstracts/texts - 2000-4000 characters)

Language: English (all texts will be also translated in to Latvian).

TOPICS:

The publication will cover wide range of topics under 4 main sections:

ELECTROMAGNETIC COSMOLOGY, SPECTRAL ECOLOGY AND EMF (ELECTRO-MAGNETIC FIELDS) RESEARCH: Modern cosmology constitutes the world we live in and our understanding about it by reducing ” the physical reality - galaxies, starts, planets, atoms - to electrical or electromagnetic configurations” - as stated by Bureau d’etudes (in their “Industrial dogma”). Could it be that “understanding the electromagnetic field is the only way to understand ourselves and our surroundings”? In such context the issue of “spectral ecology” will be investigated in the broadest sense possible. This section provides a critique of the industrial dogma and propaganda of electromagnetism, health and ‘green’ issues stemming from electrosmog and meriting more research, as well as sustainability and energy usage and other aspects in relation to communication and information technologies.

CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE: FROM IDEOLOGY AND CULTURE OF SPYING (AND SECURITY) TO CONVERSION OF MILITARY TECHNOLOGIES: This topic studies secret past of communication technologies of military origin. Espionage phenomenon is explored, tracing back to its origins in military history of ancient culture. This part also brings up an issue of “cultural intelligence” - contemporary conversion and culturalisation process of military technologies by exploring how former military facilities have been conversed to become important social and cultural centers and objects.

FREE SPECTRUM: WAVES AND ELECTROMAGNETIC POLITICS: This field looks at electromagnetic spectrum as a socio-political space, investigating political practices in spectrum and bringing up debate on “free waves” and “open spectrum”. The spectrum is regulated and divided: for commercial use, military, radio amateurs, etc., yet wireless community networks continue to explore the exempt part of the spectrum, making small parts of the spectrum available for all.

TECHNOLOGY MYTH, ARTISTIC INTERPRETATIONS AND CONTEMPORARY GHOST STORIES: Electromagnetic fields have become the ghosts of today - invisible and surrounding us, opening up the boundaries of our imagination and bringing technology myths to life. This topic explores the place of those myths and stories in the life of modern society.

Scientific editorial board:

Armin Medosch - PhD., Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
Rasa Smite - PhD., Riga Stradina University; researcher at MPLab of Liepaja University; director of the RIXC, The Center for New Media Culture, Riga, Latvia.
Inke Arns - Dr. phil., artistic director of the Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV), Dortmund, Germany.
Douglas Kahn - Prof. and Head of Technocultural Studies at University of California at Davis, USA.
Andrey Smirnov - Head of the Theremin Center for Electroacoustic Music at Moscow State Conservatory, Russia.
Florian Dombois - Prof. and Head of the Institute for Transdisciplinarity (Y) at Berne University of the Arts, Switzerland.
Atau Tanaka - Prof., Culture Lab of Newcastle University, UK.

Please join us as we host an international group of scholars and practitioners who are gathering to explore the roles of narrative and mediation in art practices that engage sound as a material. The symposium will consist of three panel discussions as well as an exhibition of audio-works for portable music players made expressly for the geography, architecture, and social spaces of the Princeton University campus.

The exhibition will begin the festival on the morning of Friday, March 28th. Thirty iPods and corresponding maps will be made available for check-out from the Mendel Music Library Circulation desk in the Woolworth Center for Musical Studies. After participants have had time to explore the audio-works, opening comments and a panel comprised of artists and musicians will start the symposium. The first panel will consist of musician and sound artist William Basinski, whose melancholy minimal electronic music has achieved critical acclaim; artist Jon Brumit, whose Neighborhood Public Radio project is featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial; multimedia artist Brenda Hutchinson, who will lead sunrise and sunset bell-ringings throughout the festival; as well as sound artist Michael J. Schumacher, founder of New York’s Diapason Gallery for Sound Art.

After more time Saturday to explore the site-specific audio-works, the second panel will take up the notion of narrative as it relates to sound practices. Kristin Oppenheim’s spare and hypnotic sound installations invoke layers of personal memory, while Stephen Vitiello’s work transforms incidental atmospheric noises into mesmerizing soundscapes that alter our perception of the surrounding environment. Mendi + Keith Obadike collaborate on interdisciplinary projects investigating race, history and identity, and Thomas Levin, a curator and cultural theorist, focuses on sound technologies and issues of surveillance in media practices.

The symposium’s third and final panel will address issues of mediation in sound art. Ruben Gallo will talk about Mexican sound artist Taniel Morales’s Pirate Radio. Ed Osborn will present his kinetic and audible sound installations, while Camille Norment will discuss her artistic practice, which extends the fine arts into extra-disciplinary realms such as scientific research, city planning, and interaction design. Tianna Kennedy, program director of Brooklyn’s free103point9 transmission arts network and a participating artist in the festival, will discuss issues related to transmission, participatory practice and social sculpture.

Sonic Fragments is sponsored by the Princeton University Department of Music, The Peter B. Lewis Center for the Performing Arts, The Graduate School, The Sound Lab research group in the Department of Computer Science, The Aesthetics and Media Track in the Department of German, The Program in Media and Modernity, The Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

The Solent Centre for Architecture + Design, in partnership with London-based media art innovators Hive Networks and artist Armin Medosch, have been working with Southampton City Council’s Oral History Unit on Hidden Histories, a unique project that turns the city itself into a giant outdoor gallery.

Hidden Histories makes accessible some of the highs and lows of Southampton’s 20th Century history, the glory of great ships and journeys as well as the disasters and long forgotten tales.

Hidden Histories will uncover those treasures through a revolutionary new concept of Street Radio. This is a totally new way of experiencing the city. The system utilises wireless communication technologies such as WIFI and Bluetooth in combination with FM radio to create a public interface to the city’s heritage. A selection of stories from the Oral History Unit will be broadcast from 10 nodal points linked together to form a media rich walk that transports people through the changing life of the city. Following the success of the pilot scheme it is hoped that the project can be extended further not only in Southampton but to other towns and cities as well.

The walk begins in and around the proposed ‘Cultural Quarter’ on Above Bar Street and the Civic Centre complex. You can experience the walk 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through any FM radio receiver or mobile phone with radio capacity. Route maps and radio units can be hired from Southampton’s Tourist Information Centre from Monday 17th March. A limited number of or radios will be available for borrowing. Please bring a portable radio or an FM enabled mobile phone.

You can read research notes by Armin Medosch here; sample some of his other writing here; and find out more about HiveNetworks here.

__________________

Soundpocket 1 — created for Urban Interface, Oslo (2007) — was installed in a narrow passageway connecting two parts of the city. The soundbeam, which can be as narrow as 50 cm in diameter, was mounted on a pan/tilt head which made it possible to place the sounds very precisely in the passageway. By bouncing the sound off surfaces, it seemed as if the sound could be coming from a window, door, elevator, or a poster on the wall. Most of the sounds seemed to belong to the site; others were slightly out of place, like the sound of a chandelier blowing in the wind.

I wanted it to be slight distortions to the regular soundscape of the passageway, and was pleased to see that the people who used this passageway regularly were noticing these disturbances. This could be described using the first of Barthes´ three listening modes: hearing involves “evaluation of the spatio-temporal situation“ and thus, it is linked to a “notion of territory“. It places the listener on alert when new sounds which don’t “fit in” are heard. By adding an extra layer of sound if also made people focus on the sounds which were already there.

For Soundpocket 2, HC Gilje set up an Internet radio station (using Nicecast), and played sounds from his library of field recordings. He found three locations in Oslo to serve as local radio stations. They were connected to visible cues: a huge oak tree, a small sculpture, and a small pond in the roundabout. The range of the local stations more or less corresponded to these visual cues: if you saw them you would be able to pick up the signal. Gilje used AAREFF FM transmitters placed with the three hosts, who allowed him to pick up their Internet radio streams. The result was three very local radio stations sending out a continuous soundtrack from other places, so somehow these recorded locations came in dialogue with the physical locations of the radio stations. The listening involved active participation from the public as you would need to tune in on your own radio to pick up the broadcast.

HC Gilje works with realtime environments, installations, live performance, set design and singlechannel video. Gilje has presented his work through different channels throughout the world: in concert-venues,theatre and cinema venues, galleries, festivals and through several international dvd releases, including 242.pilots live in Bruxelles on New York label Carpark and Cityscapes on Paris-label Lowave. He was a member of the video-impro trio 242.pilots, and was also the visual motor of kreutzerkompani. In october 2006 Gilje started a 3 year position as a research fellow at Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway, exploring how audiovisual technology can be used to transform, create, expand, amplify and interpret physical spaces. He blogs at Conversations with Spaces.

The workshop is focused on the construction of sustainable, customized and networked instruments. Participants are invited to build up to three different musical devices: 1) Powerful analog Special Noise Unit (SNU), a kind of chaos - musical - noise - generator - touch - oscillator-instrument. (It’s even produces FM radio); 2) Simple step-sequencer SEQ8 to give electricity certain patterns; and 3) Mini-FM-transmitter to conquer your proximity.

A radio & noise installation will be available to present the above mentioned electronics and to show how building-blocks can be arranged in unusual ways, that we get an alive instrument, which has many possibilities to create unpredictable moments of sound, requiring adjustments from the player, but at the same time having a life of its own.

Additionally (if there is time and interest): A simple production technique of electronic boards with laser printer will be shown and practiced ~ Some neu(ronal) surprises and electronic DIY tricks (incl. plans) for building most electronic circuits found on the Internet will be explored.

Expected outcome: Live sound arrangement with all workshop participants making use of newly-constructed electronic instruments.

Participants profile: Electronic artists and every one who is interested in pushing beyond the usual boundaries of controlling electronics.

Registration: On-line registration (Max 12 participants)

Language: German/English

Fees:
Electronic parts - 30 euro. (to be paid directly to Jo FRGMNT Grys)
Workshop fee - 20 euro/15 euro (students)

About Jo FRGMNT Grys: Studied chemistry, philosophy, mineralogy etc at the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen then more and more turned towards arts using scientifically influenced thinking to investigate formation of structure from noise & order, from error & law and feedback as his main artistic themes. Grys is working with videos, electronics, computers, body & brain. Performs with noisiV (self-made electronics and video manipulations), TOB (transmitters and self-made electronics). Grys makes electronic installations & international workshops since 2004. Lives in Berlin. The band.

Writing On Air will invite us on a journey through twisted tongues and prosthetic voices, fungal language, the global screamscape, a brief seminar of the proper facial expression for catastrophe, the song of a disembodied knee, radio philosophy and other essential audio ephemera.

Gregory Whitehead is an internationally renowned audio artist, writer, director and producer of well over one hundred radio plays, essays and acoustic adventures. His productions have won numerous major awards, including a Prix Italia for Pressures of the Unspeakable, a Prix Futura for Shake, Rattle, Roll and Sony Gold Academy Awards for The Loneliest Road and No Background Music, featuring Sigourney Weaver. He also performs frequently in literary cabarets and media festivals, as well as live-to-air.

Decomposing Spacetime by Non-linear Insertions of Waves of Sonic Tension: Jeroen Uyttendaele and Isjtar continue their symbiotic merger of sonic material and strategies. Discarding dichotomies as rhythm and texture, form and function, digital and analogue, they seek to build arches of sonic tension.

Isjtar makes electronic music and new media art. He has a profound fascination for all things that underpin the mind, perception and reality. When not lost in fantasies of the systems that surround us, he translates this obsession into performances, installations and music tracks, with an ever critical reflection and a corresponding aesthetic. He is a core-member of OKNO, Society of Algorithm, Code31 and works with several other artists and collectives such as Jeroen Uyttendaele, Shelbatra Jashari, Masato Tsutsui, Machine Centered Humanz and So-on. He had a short and enriching affair with RITS radio, but got lost deciphering reality.

As a Master in Art Science student in Den Hague, Jeroen Uyttendaele extends his experiments in sender-receiver feedback systems. By integrating old fashioned, discarded technology with contemporary digital techniques, he searches for new forms which are neither nostalgic, nor blinded by cutting edge hype. He is a Master graduate of RITS radio.

You can open following URL’s in your mediaplayer:
20u30 :: http://stream.okno.be:8000/gregory_whitehead.m3u
22u :: http://stream.okno.be:8000/isjtar_jeroen.m3u

For a download you can go to (from 1/3/2008)
http://okno.be/streaming_media/audio/2008/gregory_whitehead.mp3
http://okno.be/streaming_media/isjtar/decomposing_spacetime.mp3

Collaboration with10 years Rits Radio. Supported by :: the Flemish Authorities (Vlaamse Gemeenschap) and the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC).

European Sound Delta is a mobile project on the Danube & Rhine Rivers focusing on radio-art using sounds of European cities. Two teams will be travelling on both rivers this summer, recording sounds, producing live performances and radio broadcasts with local sound-artists. A final exhibition is scheduled in Strasbourg by the end of September 2008 as part of Ososphere. International sound artists are invited to apply with a project meant to be created on one of the trans-European floating labs.

Main Objectives:

–> To give young people the experience of a professional mobile project
–> A documentary artistic research on cultural identities of European cities
–> Built a new european network in the field of sound art
–> Experiment ICT via innovative artistic practices

Participating countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Romania, Serbia & Slovakia

Associated curators: Valerie Vivancos and Joachim Montessuis.

Participating artists & residents (list not closed): Aymeric De Tapol, Tonic Train, Dinahbird, Jopo Stereo, SIC: Hori Cosmin Samol, Ewen Chardronnet, Alejandra Perez Nunez, Julien Ottavi, Chris Watson, Vincent Epplay, Alejandra & Aeron, Robert Hampson, Kassel Jaeger, AGF, Jorg Piringer, Yannick Dauby, Christian Zanesi, Phil Niblock, Charlemagne Palestine, Jean-Philippe Roux, Gael Segalen, Philip Griffiths, Joachim Montessuis.