lovely lovely : First Spark: First Spark 2013 at Soundart Radio 102.5fm

First Spark: First Spark 2013 at Soundart Radio 102.5fm: The First Spark Radio Festival began in 2009 when we relaunched Soundart Radio under our new Community Radio Licence for South Devon after...

Radio Anywhere = YEAH ANYWHERE :-)

( but you do need plug in power )

POTENTIALLY radio from local pubs, and poetry clubs, schools and festivals; debates in cafes, round fires, at bus stops, radio in cars, and youth club breakfast bars; from allotments, and tenements, and pensioner's hairdressers'; from camp kitchens, and soup kitchens, and elevators, from street corners, and bowling allies, and soap boxes, from markets, skate parks, car parks and the job centre, from the playgroup and the workshop ......

Soundart Radio has successfully won a funding bid to purchase and put into action a mobile broadcasting kit. The 'Radio Anywhere' project has been running a six day workshop to train operators of that kit, and develop user projects to get it into use. The potential of Radio Anywhere ( essentially a neat little mobile studio ) has come at a time when the station had just downsized its' premises from a sweet suite of rooms to a cosy kiosk.

Seeing Radio Anywhere like a evolvement of and compliment to existing radio-making at Soundart Radio gives a lot of reassurance for the station's healthy future. Though the premises have downsized, the show goes on- Soundart Radio is growing and adapting to serve the wider (and wider) community -by working to become even more accessible, and taking opportunities to make radio in new situations : all the time allowing ideas of the broadcastable to develop.

Projects of neighbourhood radio and on-the-street radio (not limited to voxpops but radio made in the street by the street, for the street) have a really interesting history- two projects come to mind particularly. The 1980's Galway Women's Pirate Radio was run from a woman's home, and used to share news, ideas, poetry, and discussion, including that of the *illegal subject of abortion. Margaretta D'Arcy, who wrote about those broadcasts, said of such 'intimate' (50 Irish women participated) broadcasting projects- "only in small groups can there be full exploration of the three F's: freedom to give and receive information, freedom of expression and freedom of speech." The 1970's miniFM boom in Japan also broke open ideas of specialist skilled performers and unskilled passive audience by setting up radio stations in teashops and on street corners- a movement Tetsuo Kogawa said was full of "media experiments which led to a radical change in individual self expression, community relationships, and the meaning of communication."  Radio Home Run for instance, defined itself as a gathering place with a transmitting device- visitors and neighbours would congregate to discuss, argue, plan community action and develop social activities, theatre and music.

Contemporary radio practices the world over have really run with this too-  for example, the wonderful radio aporee project runs a global sound map, and a live broadcast, a dropbox for international participation, and ongoing artistic projects exploring ideas around networks and broadcasting, sonic geography and sound space. The soundmap not speech-specific radio, but the sounds of different environments.   I put on today’s’ radio aporee map, and heard recordings from ‘neighborhoods’ in 4 different continents.  Uno writes of initial idea of the aporee soundmap: "we're exchanging ears and sharing experiences from otherwise mostly unreachable places. For me it re-enabled and activated a formerly lost or inaccessible space." read the radio aporee blog here.… I love the way that different producers and recordists, in different societies, have different ideas for the use of radio, recording and noise- and are drawn to share aural aspects of what interests them across borders and media platforms. 

Radio Anywhere tech specs-
hmmmmm not my forte, but i'm working on it-
gonna have to draw a schematic ( in felt tip on the back of a used envelope of course ) to try to portray the wonderful world of relaying signals that will be flying hither and thither....

Radio Anywhere is tumblr-ing
and will be covering the Totnes Christmas Festival over the next 3 Tuesdays of December.

Kogawa, Tetsuo. Free Radio in Japan- the Mini FM Boom
D'Arcy, Margaretta. Playing With The Airwaves
both quoted from Radiotext(e) 1993

London calling ...

Last week I was in London (bravely done country mouse) on a recreational visit and a radio radio mission. As well as the chance to catch up with long-lost friends, two draws- both radiophonic- broke me out of Devon.


sp23 infoblip
An invitation to come party on the MS Stubnitz, at an all night event held to celebrate the 23rd birthday of the sp23 -a legendary party crew known previously as Spiral Tribe, was a massive and joyful incentive to shake the red soil off my shoes. I am mixing interviews and the OUTSTANDING TECHNO into a special broadcast for Soundart Radio.  sp23's quite beautiful activist/ artivist ethos blew me away- the party was everything a party should be, but one of the things about being 'blown away' is finding a way of presenting what was felt and done, after the event...    WORKING ON IT OK

(The MS Stubnitz itself is a amazing venue. The ship is steel grey and beautiful- in a techno robust way- metal, bent economic iron buttressed hull like a submarine's ballroom. The ship is itself the feature. A culture ark- an archive for performance and happenings, 800 foot long, with a crew of around 25. MS Stubnitz entered British waters for the first time as a venue for the London Pleasure Gardens – sailing up to dock in the metropolis' east end, bringing a fresh attitude to what a venue can be in 2012 - a 1960's Russian fishing ship- the harvester of the fleet- refit to provide stage, dance and exhibition space, bars and a chill out areas, and a deck for surveying the lights of the city spread out all around and reflected in the black water.)

Community Radio
I've been formulating plans / wanting to make connections with other community radio stations for some months now, and this visit was perfect to contact and visit several London stations, to find out some about different outfits and broadcasting models, to look at possible collaborative opportunities, and to test the waters of inter-station interactions.   I visited Reprezent 107.3FM in Peckham and Reverb 97.2FM in Brighton and was very inspired to see and hear about their projects... MORE ON THIS SOON

Both the sp23 party and the community radio station visits re-enthused my fascination with public delineations / transgressions of territories- ( internal and external, physical and intellectual, formal and creative ). Focusing on the paradoxes thrown up around rights to expression / licences in an age of worldwide communications, disparate access to resources, and morphing global political economic ecological and cultural geographies form part of this Radio Radio project- and the promotion of the airwaves as a TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE in which to celebrate of course :-)
de·lin·e·ate  (d-ln-t)

1. To draw or trace the outline of; sketch out.

2. To represent pictorially; depict.

3. To depict in words or gestures; describe.

trans·gres·sive  (trns-grsv, trnz-)

adj.

1. Exceeding a limit or boundary, especially of social acceptability.

2. Of or relating to a genre of fiction, filmmaking, or art characterized by depictions of behavior that challenge socially acceptable norms.

3. Of or relating to geological transgression.

London got under my skin this time- this time something switched for me. I found I felt like I did when I landed in India in 2001 : I was culturally shook, discomforted (but amazed), kind of electrified, overwhelmed (overjoyed), everything felt new and inexperienced - THIS WAS ASSIMILATION OF A KIND...   Rather than passing through on a A-B-C business or tourist trip ( itinerary, set routes, eyes down, same old same old just a different venue) I (maybe? actually? kinda?) 'dérived' some-  wondering, constructively drifting developing a relation with that new geography and people, and trying new avenues of 'being her now'. Felt opened, and welcomed it :-)

audio outreach #1

The focus of this project is borne from my belief that radio is ( best as ) a networking tool rather than a distribution tool.  

This can be illustrated in the ( myriad, international, varied, experimental ) interventions of public and community radio- where radio is made to serve the desires and needs of its community- because it's making is in its community's hands, compared with corporate radio, where we can see ( hear? ) agenda'd radio as a form as billboard or market for consumables with a one-way-only traffic flow.  This opens up a whole world for investigation:  beyond the mainstream, what is radio ? 

Rather than the tool of hegemony radio is found to be the plaything of creatives. As a communication platform radio is a complicated, multifaceted media- it is many things to many people. Radio's history is radical and rich- and groundbreaking contemporary practice occurs on the airwaves even now.

I am going to explore this, through communications and interactions with radio enthusiasts -from both sides of the transmitter-, looking at different applications and uses of broad-and-narrow casting, and investigating grassroots practices and technological innovations. I'll be blogging here as a research practice, and phonically too with a weekly radio show on Soundart Radio 102.5fm in Devon UK starting spring 2013... ( if the world hasn't ended ;-)

this is The Radio Radio Show ...   stay locked

Zen saying : ' messy studio messy mind' - so a show to untangle and connect radio leads then...

WELL-COME-ON!

This is a new blog for a new project- you know when it all suddenly fits into place- (( click click ting )), like perhaps, they might well be the very same thoughts as earlier but you'd never thought them quite in this way before? and now- if not totally making sense, there is a new situation-
That happened just now- and here, born from chance and context, is the first result of a new radio activity... so - Welcome!