Thanks Anna,
That was an excellent and informative introduction to your work.
As someone, who has also worked with 'live' radio - in the early days
with pirate radio in Bristol
(http://www.irational.org/heath/electro_magnetic_installation/) and
London, before the Internet. And, more recently, on Resonance fm running
an hour long program interviewing artists with others
(http://www.furtherfield.org/programmes/radio). I appreciate the
nuances, the challenges and the excitement the medium of sound can offer.
>I’m very interested in bringing the discursive lines of the radio back
>to the Museum, but I’m more interested in creating sinergies than
replicating
>or adapting experiences. What I mean is that it would not work for me
to do
>a live show just because. We would have to find the concept/subject
where that
>makes sense.
I think you make a good point here. Bringing it to others to listen to
whether it is live or not can offer significant experiences. For me, it
does not 'necessarily' matter whether it is local radio, national, in a
museum or if it is broad-casted in the streets. The spatial requirements
of the works and their conceptual needs can dictate the process and
situation of how it connects with others. Interaction is a contextual
requirement, not always a given or set in stone. This means that
transversal experiences are more of a matter of degrees, not an absolute.
So, I'm wondering what kind of ideas and philosophies inspire you to do
what you do?
Wishing you well.
marc
> Apologies for stepping in late to respond.
>
> A few emails ago Marialaura asked if we had ever worked with live
stream. I wonder if you’re asking whether we have produced a live radio
show, probably in front of an audience, which has been streamed. This is
a common practice for radio artists (working in the field of expanded
radio) and also for the more commercial radio, where very popular shows
bring their live shows to theaters as a way of funding their projects
and also to please their hardcore followers. This is indeed a challenge,
because once you bring voice and sound produced within the radio
aesthetics/format into the performative field, the audience expects some
theatrical and visual narrative to be added to the formula. Which is
perfectly ok for me and on a more personal note (and forgive me for
drifting away from the subject) I must admit how much I’d love to attend
to one of Garrison Keilor’s Prairie Home Companion shows
http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/ - and I strongly recommend the
documentary "The Man on the radio in the red shoes".
>
> What Marialaura is asking is quite relevant and it is also a quite
common subject of discussion within the Museum as well, where the
question turns into the following one: How can we bring our work in the
online sphere to the physical one, ie. how can we expand the visitors
experience to our Museum galleries with the in depth research of our
radiophonic materials? Or how can we insert the radio into the four
walls of the Museum Galleries.
>
> I find this issue problematic and challenging. I may sound
conservative, since we are all talking about transversal experiences,
the diffusion of frontiers, etc., but my argument goes in the following
direction: if there’s not a proper space/context for that I ask myself:
why should we? I even find it hard to understand where the problem is.
We live in this bulimic culture (a term by the Catalan poet Eduard
Escoffet) where we expect physical experiences to be as hypertextual and
rhizomatic as the online ones, and we feel the urge to facilitate this
somehow. Even more so, it may not be enough and we want the
digital/online experience (ie. an online radio show) to be brought to
the performative field, to the physical realm. I’m very interested in
bringing the discursive lines of the radio back to the Museum, but I’m
more interested in creating sinergies than replicating or adapting
experiences. What I mean is that it would not work for me to do a live
show just because. We would have to find the concept/subject where that
makes sense.
> So far we’ve approached the relationship with the presential
experience with a very traditional approach. Here’s an example: in 2008,
we held an exhibition called “Possibility of Action. The Life of the
Score” http://www.macba.cat/en/exhibition-possibility-of-action, curated
by Barbara Held and Pilar Subirà (who were then producing the Ràdio Web
MACBA series ‘Lines of Sight’
http://rwm.macba.cat/en/linesofsight-tag/). This exhibition extended
their exploration of the concepts of transmission and interpretation
into the visual and objectual world, and applied them to musical
notation and related forms of expression, as well as some other
representations of sound. Within that context there were also a couple
of shows which were streamed online from New York to Barcelona, but then
again, it was the series the one that was asking for this approach,
since the whole issue was about transmission. It made sense and the
result was the podcast “Lines of Sight #4. Radio Action III.
free103point9” http://rwm.macba.cat/en/curatorial/lines4/capsula.
>
> We’ve also organised concerts and lectures related to our series on
the history of sound appropiationism “Variations”
http://rwm.macba.cat/en/variations_tag/ and “Memorabilia. Collecting
sounds with...” http://rwm.macba.cat/en/memorabilia_tag/, a series that
offers an insight into private collections of music and sound
memorabilia. But again our goal is not necessarily to bring the radio
into the Museum galleries, but to find contexts in which the interaction
between the two makes sense.
>
> Another example where streaming made complete sense for me (together
with the “Lines of Sight” experience I mentioned) was %rand(), a project
by my dear friend and Ràdio Web MACBA collaborator Joe Gilmore (and, his
partner in crime, Tom Betts):
http://joe.qubik.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=main.rand And it worked because
it was perfectly aligned with the heart and soul of the project. But
then again their idea wasn’t to attach the digital experience with the
physical, rather than creating a 100% automated project, a net.radio
station streaming realtime generative music. All musical content was
generated by computer software algorithms and streamed. It’s a shame the
project is no longer available online. I like to think some of the ideas
they worked with were later applied to our “Composing with process”
series, where Joe Gilmore and Mark Fell explore process and generative
systems applied to music.
>
> That said, the answer to Marielaure’s question is: no, we haven’t
worked with live stream. But for very different reasons: it’s been
mainly because we don’t have the human and physical infrastructure to do
so. One of the main values of our project is that we’re producing quite
unique podcasts (or so I hope) with an in-depth documentation and
research process. We are also very concerned about the aesthetic values
we bring to the table, being fully aware that our raw material and
vehicle is sound. So to do what we are doing live is not possible.
>
> This reminds me of a conversation that took place two years ago in
Supersimetria, in Barcelona, between Curtis Roads, Mark Fell and Roc
Jiménez de Cisneros, which was held by Tony Myatt as part of his
research for the MRC in York. Roads was asked on his approach to his
live show and he explained how it was relegated to the live playback of
prerecorded pieces, mainly because he is a studio virtuoso and his
signature microsound compositions are simply not doable in real-time. I
really respect his approach and honesty, but the truth is that this
conception of the live show is still controversial today for a large
part of the public.
> Last but not least, we are doing what we are doing on the fly,
learning by doing it, with no radiophonic infrastructure. Our radio is
as small as a DR 100 Tascam digital recorder, a Beyer mic and whatever
computer and software our producers own/use, and as big as the huge
amount of experiences, stories, intuitions, theses and phobias of those
who get into the lab with us: philosophers, curators, artists,
activists, musicians, collectors (and even all at once).
>
> I hope I have answered the question somehow.
>
> Best
> Anna
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Curating digital art - www.crumbweb.org
[[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Axel Lapp
[[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2012 3:03 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] November Theme: Curating on and
through web-based platforms
>
> Hi Susan, and all:
>
> Having also experienced this piece in Berlin at the time, and having
> some very fond memories of it, I can see why we are now placing
> historic value on its imperfections, eg the time-lag through the slow
> internet connection, and the warbling of the sounds through the
> computer reading in a language that made German, the language of most
> passers-by, almost impossible to understand (though that it happened
> in the window of the British Council offices could at least excuse
> that dominance - even if it was US-English). It was the state of
> technology and it was a new experience.
> But, of course, then, we weren't enjoying it when it didn't work, when
> people in the street didn't realise that contact was made, but when a
> conversation actually happened.
>
> Today, that conversation would be much easier to achieve. People are
> more aware of the technological possibilities, and it would run much
> smoother - if still with a time lag, that it just takes to typing a
> message. Would it otherwise be different? Would it still not expect
> people to accept the offer of a conversation with somebody they cannot
> see?
>
> I am not so sure ...
>
> Best,
>
> Axel
>
>
> Am 23.11.2012 um 14:19 schrieb susan collins:
>> This work was in a sense all about the state of the technology
>> (both technically and culturally) at that moment in time. The timelags
>> (which wouldn't exist now in the same way) becoming a material
>> quality of
>> the work, and the fact that many of the people experiencing the work
>> on
>> the street were not online and this was in many cases their first
>> internet
>> connected (or first chatroom) experience, gave it another quality
>> altogether (surprise, disbelief and in some cases wonder), one that
>> would
>> be impossible now to replicate (online anyway). It may be worth
>> mentioning
>> that no one at the street end ever saw a computer - nor did they
>> have any
>> (visible) interface), just a (disconnected) projected mouth to stop
>> them
>> in the street and keep them standing there long enough for the
>> conversation to flow. I showed the work five times in five different
>> cities. The first one was Brighton in 1997, the last one Berlin in
>> 2001.
>> By 2001 the image stream was colour, the passersby more familiar,
>> and for
>> me the piece did not make sense to show again as it had not only
>> materially changed, but the cultural context that it operated in had
>> already in those four years changed beyond recognition.
>
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