Waveguide Radio Workshops & Spectral Switchboard
WITH RADIUS FM
Waveguide Radio Workshops began in November 2014 with artists and residents who have a relationship to the community of Gary, facilitated by artists Austen Brown and Alyssa Moxley. Participants discussed radio and broadcast as an artform, hand built circuits based on Tetsuo Kogawa's model and created a series of spoken word and soundscapes relating to the city of Gary and communication. Field recordings created by the group, including Kelly Knaga and At Last At Last, Eveyln Bottando, Kaitlyn Stancy, John Mick, and Samuel A Love are integrated into a collaborative work broadcast from the Radius FM transmitter.
There is additional documentation from local arts organization at the Gary Area website.
Radius FM, an experimental radio broadcast platform based out of Chicago joined our group for a performance on 24th January, 2015 with local experimental musician and EVP specialist Michael Esposito. The transmitter was set up on the roof of a local parks pavilion, within walking distance to a former Bell Telephone Warehouse. We then listened to a performance of Esposito's work, integrating field recordings from the switchboard warehouse and live improvisation with flexi-discs and singing bowls. We also listened to the Waveguide Radio participants compositions and then embarked on the journey to the warehouse where we listened to a repeat of the broadcast through handheld and car radios.
"Spectral Switchboard" consists of Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) recordings captured from various flexi records and at an Indiana Bell Switchboard Warehouse in Gary, Indiana. The work asks: Do the memories and remnants of millions of phone calls passing through a single space such as a switchboard remain? Maybe even develop an independent existence within a single space? Is it possible that almost the entire range of human emotions could be bound to a single, saturated environment? With the use of field recordings and certain historical and ambient recordings on sound sheet technology, Phantom Plastics attempts to document and perform the possibilities that not only do our oral communications over telephone wires contain the energy of our human emotions, but also that they create their own ghosts that still exist in the ether.
Episode 59 was performed by Michael Esposito (electronics, singing bowls), Alyssa Moxley (turntable, singing bowls), and Anthony A. Dunn (electronics).
Listen to the Waveguide Participants broadcast here: