RECORD audio of election coverage on a Voice of America station — UPLOAD your recordings to http://thevoa.net and tag them according to language and content — DOWNLOAD from the searchable pool of available recordings — REMIX the broadcasts and UPLOAD them back to the website.

A curated playlist of compositions and remixes will be broadcast from The Sea and Space Gallery in Los Angeles in a special event on November 4 - US election day - as part of the Audacity of Desperation exhibition. Upload from August 25 - November 4 to be included in the live event!

Propaganda: The Voice of America radio service was initiated in World War Two and dramatically expanded during the Cold War to win “hearts and minds” for the new American Empire. All major Cold War players operated such “information services,”which were collectively called “The Voices” in some targeted countries. Recognizing that the broadcasting service was largely a tool of cultural and foreign policy propaganda, Congress forbade the Voice of America from broadcasting directly to American citizens in 1948. Though slightly retooled, VOA persists today: the attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, invigorated Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu broadcasting. Currently, the Voice of America radio and television networks produce more than 1,000 hours of original programming per week in 45 languages, much of it covering American politics and regional foreign policy between blocks of popular music.

Elections: The 2008 election is widely viewed as a potential turning point in US foreign policy that has become ever more militaristic and interventionist in the last decade, and the prospect of the first African American president has galvanized the hopes of people around the world. Yet those who are most affected by American military and corporate action are excluded from American electoral politics. They are, quite literally, voiceless.

Voices of America offers an international audience an opportunity both to monitor the United States’ self-presentation abroad by recording VOA programming and speak back to it by remixing those broadcasts. The project obliquely points out the injustice that participation in US politics is so tightly restricted and questions, in a non-polemical fashion, how much change is possible given the persistence of Cold War, now War on Terror, infrastructure. In the arena of cultural politics, the project suggests a network of global citizens offering revised image of America’s carefully-constructed image back to itself.

Voices of America is a collaboration between Lee Azzarello and Sarah Kanouse and is sponsored by free103point9. The project is part of The UnConvention, a non-partisan, Minneapolis-based collective acting as a counterpoint to the highly scripted and predetermined nature of the contemporary presidential nomination process and convention.

Mass communication and Babilonia. Fragmented communication and freedom of expression. Secrecy and disclosure. Locked and open. Black and white. Morse Code and Light. Hallucinatory flashes of light from the top of the Petrin Tower in Prague illuminate and disorient the nocturnal cityscape of this historical and fascinating place. Sound sequences play intermittently night and day, concurrently accompanying light signals that simultaneously spell out cryptic messages in Morse Code.

In “Music for Prague 1968,” the famous Czech composer Karel Husa played his oboe while following the Morse Code rhythm as trombones wailed like sirens. Likewise, Stefano Cagol exploits the secretive Morse Code communication system to remember the Spring of Prague anniversary, evoking miscommunication, classified secrecy, displacement and disturbance.

Sound signals will pervade the city during the day, while at night they will be re-invigorated by the inclusion of pulsating light that renders them more evident and visible but nonetheless incomprehensible and mysterious. Stefano Cagol’s work nurtures and questions the ambiguity inherent in and the limitations of contemporary communication. He challenges the use of language in mass media and places his interventions between freedom of expression and mass manipulation. This consideration of control issues and mass communication is all the more pertinent for the city of Prague during its 40th anniversary of the Spring of Prague, an event that has become a strong symbol of liberty and free thought, as well as of the ill-fated imposition of political and military might. It has taken on a profound new meaning in light of the recent events currently taking place in Georgia.

Stefano Cagol (Italy) has exhibited internationally in many solo and group shows. Most recently his work was included in Eurasia, MART Museum, Rovereto and Manifesta 7, parallel event, Trento. He also participated to The Peekskill Project 2008 at HVCCA Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, New York (2008). Upcoming projects include: Abschiedsfest at MARTa Herford (Germany) and artist residency with solo show at the Hoet Bekaert Gallery, Ghent (Belgium), in April 2009.

Scheduled to take place with regularity in Bucharest, involving with each edition new curatorial formats, Ars Telefonica is conceived as a temporary platform for exhibition display which proposes a re-reading of the connections settled in a specific context between art, its venue and audience. The decision of the curators to appropriate for this edition a temporary space for exhibition display – the phone booth – responds to the actual request of the local art scene to search for new contexts of dissemination of contemporary art and to establish a community of interest for this cultural sector.

The question dropped by the project is to which extend a temporary platform of this kind can disturb the behavior of the art public, the accidental public or of the partners participating directly to contemporary art production? Do these spaces have a potential in facilitating or in speeding up the process of social and cultural exchange?

Centre for Visual Introspection is an independent platform for research, artistic and theoretical production founded in Bucharest by a collective of artists and curators. The Centre opened its doors with a series of site-specific art interventions displayed in the phone booths in the central district of Bucharest between September 23 + 27, and an accompanying program of lectures, sound performances and a special exhibition, grouped under the title Ars Telefonica. The artists’ proposals involve means of expression belonging to connected cognitive fields, giving to the passers-by the possibility to choose new coordinates to orientate in the city. The relationship of the artistic projects with the community life, the cultural memory of a place and as well with another model of communication, provoked by the appropriation of an unconventional venue, settles a change in the public expectations as far as the way art is exhibited and comes into dialogue with the spectator.

Participants: Studio Basar (Bucharest); Luca Frei (Malmő); Carl Michael von Hausswolff (Stockholm); Dőrte Meyer (Berlin); Roland Schőny (Vienna); Bernhard Schreiner (Frankfurt); son:DA (Maribor); Jiri Skala (Prague); Nasan Tur (Berlin); Joanna Warsza (Warsaw); Adnan Yildiz (Istanbul/Berlin)

Special Event: Let me hold you hand by Iratxe Jaio + Klaas van Gorkum (Rotterdam); Opening October 2. Let me hold your hand consists of old telephones, salvaged from the obscurity of second-hand shops. Each with its own peculiar character, derived from the ever changing trends of commodity design, seems to represent a voice of a different epoch. If these objects could talk, what would they say?

Nina Katchadourian: I’m often looking at the natural world, but just as often I’m looking at the human and social world. The Marfa Jingles looks at the town as a social structure — as a place where people live, work, and run businesses and organizations. I’ve kind of collected Marfa, and used the project as a vehicle to get to know the town. I think of it as not so far from my project Office Semaphore, and other public pieces that I’ve done that look at the rather mundane fixtures of everyday life. The jingles I’ve made are now being played on Marfa Public Radio — they’re in the public space, which is on the airwaves, where the people of Marfa and all of west Texas can hear this stuff.

And although I do use the term jingle, which is a form that we associate with advertising, when you hear the songs I think that it becomes evident that they aren’t ads at all. I’m using the term very loosely. The jingles are more like little sound-songs portraits of various public-service clubs, organizations, and stores. I’m doing something that when taken collectively provides a cross-section of this tiny place in Texas. I don’t really feel like I’ve been writing advertising; I feel like I’ve been writing songs and cross-pollinating them with the jingle form. “From An Interview with Nina Katchadourian: by Suzan Sherman, NYFA Current.

Today’s radio spectrum is predominately utilized by the military and governmental organizations, with government regulating bodies doling out expensive licenses to corporations for the right to broadcast en masse in public space. These powerful “one way” broadcast licenses have come to be understood as ‘radio’ versus the initial conception of radio as a “many to many” communications medium. Except for a small fraction of frequencies allocated to amateur operators, who only need to pass a simple exam to receive the right to use the spectrum, there is no other way for the public to gain any access to this resource, arguably one of Earth’s most important, and only inexhaustible resources.

Our situation today is far from Guglielmo Marconi’s visions of radio’s ability to save lives and enlighten humanity, or Velimir Klebnikov’s ‘Radio of the Future’. Instead, today’s radio spectrum is a tightly controlled, profitized commodity. In this light, DAREDX seeks to re-establish the public’s presence and right of occupation within the radio spectrum. While there exists an active and progressive amateur radio community worldwide, it is out of sight from the general public. DAREDX will expose and access the radio spectrum by aurally re-broadcasting nightly explorations throughout the radio spectrum. Activating the evening air of Cabot Square in order to re-establish the connection of the spectrum to public space. DAREDX will allow the public in the square to hear the signals we are enveloped in. Re-invigorating the words of an infamous amateur operator in the early 1900s when told by the US Navy to remove himself from a particular frequency: “Say, you navy people think you own the ether. Who ever heard of the navy, anyway? Beat it, you, beat it.” The spectrum will no longer remain closed to the ears and eyes of the public, and instead will become part of the natural landscape of Cabot Square.

Matthew Biederman, working under the call sign VA2XBX/P will be operating a high frequency transceiver in the open air of Cabot Square. He will be attempting long-distance communication with as many different operators as possible over the course of the intervention. Each complete communication will be logged and mapped creating a diary of the airwaves every night (radio.dare-dare.org). Additionally, DAREDX will attempt a set of digital communications, in order to receive SSTV (SlowScan Televsion), WEFAX (from NOAA Satellites) and many more. All of the actions’ audio will be played in Cabot Square, creating a sonic landscape of the electromagnetic spectrum in real time. All of the audio will be archived and made available under a creative commons license. The aggregation of these actions build into the overall DAREDX project.

Originally from the United States, Matthew Biederman (Montréal) has been doing performances, installations and exhibitions since the mid-1990’s. www.mbiederman.com www.spectralecology.org.

We are seeking your stories if you have traveled Yokohama’s blue line. To contribute stories about Yokohama’s blue line (above or below ground) email bluelinestories [at] gmail.com, or go to gallery Souzoukukan9001 to record your story in person from August 30 - September 7, 2008, or meet the artists traveling the blue line in Japan from September 1-6, 2008. Are We There Yet? will be collecting stories during the exhibition at gallery Souzoukukan9001 August 30 -September 7.

Are We There Yet? installation at ZAIM gallery. Check out an MP3 device at ZAIM gallery from September 6 -21, 2008.

For more information go to >> or email us (text or mp3 file) to
bluelinestories [at] gmail.com

Are We There Yet? is a part of Dislocate 08, International Festival for Art, Technology and Locality :: August 30 - September 20, 2008 Tokyo/Yokohama, Japan.

Jessica Thompson will present Freestyle SoundHack, a collaborative performance in the form of a workshop. The performance / workshop involves building Freestyle SoundKits – wearable sound pieces prototyped by the artist – that generate and broadcast electronic beats as users move through the urban environment. During the performance, the artist will give her project to the public by teaching workshop participants how to make their own Freestyle SoundKits, which they can distribute as they wish, using whatever sounds they choose.

The workshop begins at Video Pool with a Freestyle SoundKits building session, followed by live sonic and movement-based interventions in the public spaces of the Exchange District. Thompson regards her transmission of open-source technological skill as the core component of the performance. She is interested in sharing technological knowledge so that the sonic transformation of public space becomes less of a specialized artistic activity and more of an ordinary occurrence.

The workshop/performance is open to anyone aged 14 years and older. No previous electronics, hacking, coding or performance experience is needed – just a desire to experiment and play.

Enrollment is limited to 10 participants and is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The fee for the workshop is $40, which will cover the cost of workshop materials. Participants should bring their own snacks/ lunch to the workshop.

This workshop is presented by Video Pool Media Arts Centre as part of the performance festival, (in)visible Cities, which is a co-presentation of aceartinc., Urban Shman Gallery, and Plug In ICA. For more information, visit invisiblecitiesperformance.blogspot.com.

ADDITIONAL EVENT – Please join us on Friday, September 12 at 300-100 Arthur Street from 7:00 - 8:00 p.m. for an artist talk presented by Jessica Thompson during which time she’ll talk about her past work, current projects, and future ideas.

ARTIST BIO — Jessica Thompson is a new media artist whose practice encompasses sound, performance, and mobile technologies. Her projects enable audience members to create user-defined spaces and situations within urban environments. Her projects have been shown in exhibitions and festivals such as New Territories (ARCO 2005, Madrid), MACO (Mexico City), dp003 (Dundee, Scotland), ISEA 2006 (San Jose, CA), the 2006 Conflux Festival (New York), Kunsthallen Brænderigården (Denmark), and InterAccess Artist Run Centre (Toronto). Her project, SOUNDBIKE, was featured at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2005 and, more recently, she was one of five international artists invited to participate in Reinventing the Wheel, a residency held at *.artlabs in Sibiu, Romania. For more information, please visit: www.jessicathompson.ca.

These exhibition is presented thanks to generous financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council.

VIDEO POOL MEDIA ARTS CENTRE is a non-profit artist run centre dedicated to advancing the discipline of media art by providing media artists, non-profit organizations and community groups with access to professional video and media equipment, training, distribution, and programming. Video Pool strives to be a national leader fostering innovation, experimentation, critical dialogue, and advocacy in media arts.

Contact:
Cam Woykin, Education Coordinator
300-100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg MB R3B 1H3
videopool.org // videopool.blogspot.com

“Local school kids are taking it a step further and are deliberately shouting at the sign in unison in order to make the numbers change. The Manager of the night club is finding the poster helpful too – he is taking photos of the sign in the early hours of the morning to show the local council that he is not making too much noise.” [From information aesthetics]

Re-Inventing Radio seeks to explore this space by examining the way in which artists have interacted with radio and other communications media. Radio is commonly understood as the familiar, ubiquitous, broadcast medium dissemininating music, information and entertainment. But this is only one “radio”. Re-Inventing Radio looks beyond this definition to other histories of wireless communication - to the beginnings of radio when it was a communications technology before being transformed into a mass medium. Re-Inventing Radio brings together international media theorists, art historians, curators and above all artists who work with radio’s multiplicity of histories, including references to parallel developments in the history of art, e.g. Futurism, concept art, mail art, Fluxus or telecommunication art.

Re-Inventing Radio also addresses the common belief, particularly in Europe, that radio art is an art of institutionalised public radio - a belief that has long been challenged by the concept of “expanded radio”. Artists have used this concept to break through the rigidity of traditional broadcasting to include in their work other spaces and contexts and to confront in their practice - sometimes at an astonishingly early stage - such phenomena as the cultural and social effects of digitalisation and and mobility, networking, convergence and mutual remediatisation of media. With the aid of numerous specific examples - and in texts formulated for the most part by the artists themselves - Re-Inventing Radio examines the intentions and strategies of a radio art that is increasingly balancing on the edge of its own dissolution, without giving up the relevance of its questions.

Contributors: Robert Adrian, Inke Arns, Johannes Auer, Robert Barry, Gottfried Bechtold, August Black, Reinhard Braun, Hank Bull, Peter Courtemanche, Nina Czegledy, Dieter Daniels, Wolfgang Ernst, Bill Fontana, Anna Friz, Andrew Garton, Daniel Gethmann, Daniel Gilfillan, Heidi Grundmann, Wolfgang Hagen, Honor Harger, Candice Hopkins, José Iges, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Douglas Kahn, Friedrich Kittler, Tetsuo Kogawa, Richard Kriesche, Katja Kwastek, Brandon LaBelle, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, Norbert Math, Doreen Mende, Sergio Messina, Roberto Paci Dalò, Garrett Phelan, Sarah Pierce, Winfried Ritsch, Christian Scheib, Tom Sherman, Rasa S(mite, Matt Smith, Raitis S(mits, Anne Thurmann-Jajes, Lori Weidenhammer, Sandra Wintner

A publication by Verein werks in cooperation with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut Medien.Kunst.Forschung (Linz), MiDiHy Productions (Graz) and the Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen - Weserburg–Museum für Moderne Kunst (Bremen).

Re-Inventing Radio can be ordered at: kunst-buecher.de or through its publisher revolver.

Spectral Memories: the Aesthetics of the Phonographic Recording by Dugal McKinnon — Sonic artist / Composer Dugal McKinnon examines the aesthetics of the phonographic recording: “how is the record, as a technology with a well-documented history, also a signifying medium that has generated certain meanings, and modes of aesthetic production and reception?”

Sound Art and Public Auditory Awareness by Ariel Bustamante — Ariel Bustamante explores the connection between Sound Art and public auditory sensibilities by reviewing works by Max Neuhaus, Sam Auinger and Bruce Odland, Christina Kubisch, and Scout Arford and Randy Yau.