Radio art

Radio art refers to the use of radio for art.

"Radio Art implies that

• the artist who works in, and with, radio
  
• is not necessarily a trained DJ, programmer, producer, engineer, or personality,
  
• but one who uses sound to make art and
  
• seeks ways to transit it through radio as art.
  

The act and process suggests that the radio medium can be used in an alternative way (even shaped as a material), in relation to its familiar use." ^[1]

In that sense, the way the message is transmitted and received by an audience is as important as the message itself.

"As an aural art form it reaffirms that it's not just what we say, but the way we say it." ^[2] In Victoria Fenner's words, "Radio art is art which is specifically composed for the medium of radio and is uniquely suited to be transmitted via the airwaves." ^[3]

Radio Art projects can be collaborative including various professional sources, unifying an audio broadcast with science, experimentation, geography, entertainment, etc." Some have approached radio as an architectural space to be constructed sonically and linguistically; or as the site of an event, an arena, or stage. Some used it as a gathering place, or a conduit, a means to create community. Other artists have employed the media landscape itself as the narrative, while others looked into the body as the site and the source; the voicebox, the larynx become medium and metaphor." ^[2]

Traditional genres of Radio Art include:

radio documentary, radio drama, soundscape, sound art, electroacoustic music, sound poetry, performance, open source, translation, interviews, audio galleries, radio drama, soundscape, sound art, electro-acoustic music, sound poetry intended to the radio, spoken word, concerts, experimental narratives, sonic geographies, pseudo documentaries, radio cinema, conceptual and multimedia performances intended to the radio.

Art radio and webradio

An art radio is a radio station that would dedicate every second of its transmission time to radio art. Although this kind of project can seem utopian in the traditional state of radio, there are few lasting experiences in the underground or community side such as London's ResonanceFM which intend to make radio with art and promote the art of listening.

Also, radio had renewed itself through the Internet. The audio streaming technique had replaced the analogue transmitting system and artists can experiment on radio outside the legal constraints of an FM license for example. Among the webradios which are dedicated to radio art, some broadcast pieces like traditional radios. Some others directly experiment with the medium in the more concrete sense. Radio Astronomy^[4] broadcast sounds taken from outer space in real time. Le Poulpe^[5] is a networking experimental radio that mix several "spaces" processed and streamed through the Internet. Besides, podcasting can be considered as a new way of broadcasting, thus a new way of bringing radio art to listeners. Of the on-demand kind, SilenceRadio.org^[6] is a website which publish sound pieces which explore the different genres of radio art or intend to question the manners of making radio art today. The Ràdio Web MACBA^[7] Curatorial series^[8] also experiments with the radio art format.

"The origins of radio are deeply rooted in a very idealistic socialist potential to provide the communication necessary to connect people across space and time. At the beginning of the 20th century, radio was the equivalent to the Internet today in terms of its social as well as political possibilities. However, its development into a highly hierarchical system with expensive licensing fees and severe punishments for violations of these laws in order to protect certain industries has resulted in radio space being controlled by guardians of commerce. Radio licensing laws are concerned with the protection of copyrighted material. Radio has the potential to be a completely liberated, mobile and inhabited mass media." ^[1]

Radio Art Experiments and Project Examples

Transversal Performance
By: Jacques Foschia and Tetsuo Kogawa
A streaming and networked feedback performance between Jacques Foschia (Brussels) and Tetsuo Kogawa (Tokyo).

Free Radio Linux
By: Radioqualia
Free Radio Linux was an open source, performance and sound project. A kind of spoken-word performance, where a programmed “speech.bot” (software that converts text into a synthesized human voice) was to recite all 4,141,432 lines of the source code of the kernel, or core, of the Linux operating system.

LINES OF SIGHT #7. Radio Incarné. Yasunao Tone and Tetsuo Kogawa
By: Barbara Held and Pilar Subirà
A collaboration by the philosopher and pioneer of mini FM radio, Tetsuo Kogawa (Tokyo), and sound artist and exFluxus Yasunao Tone (New York), based on an email exchange on radioart.