RADIO ART

In the 1960’s, my father towed WWII radar across the Sahara, refining radiowave signals to track wing beats of insects etc. Thirty years later I began working with radiowave signals, when seeking a way of broadcasting into the inner spaces of the cars zooming all around the ultra urban location of my new ‘Memory Museum’ [1996].

This magical ability to send sound through space, and thus create an expanded sonic place, appealed to me. In researching radio as a sound artist, these works sought to explore more, what ‘art with radio’ could mean.

I use very short range transmitters, in a variety of ways, broadcasting to:

floating radio-headphones suspended under a cloud of red heart helium balloons, playing sounds of all the women in my expanded family singing the word loooooove [Love Song 2003];

or using a sonic treasure map to hunt religious celebration broadcasts hiding within the superb Colourscape sensory inflatable space [Secret Service 2010];

or performing with transmitters live at Cafe Oto [Radio Play 2014];

or working with 100 international sound recordists to capture the calmness without us present, broadcast as a 24/7 radio station [foundsoundscape 2015];

or performing to an audience holding radios as speakers in a church, gallery, and concert halls [Phoenix & Phaedra 2009];

or forming a Robert Wyatt radio ensemble [Clouds from Cuckooland 2011];

or my first commission for a cinema car radio [CX Symphony 1997];

or inviting 7500 visitors to get in my supermarket motorway of cars, to listen to what lays ahead in our fast-lane living [Asleep at the wheel 2010];
or a tribute to a musician from within my childhood [Coda for John Dankworth 2010];

or sharing the idea we are living like yeast [Imagine a World 2013];

or waking up a chorus of sped up operatic warblers [Aerial Aria in the aviary 2015];

or forming the versatile ‘Local Radio Orchestra’, which uses up to 24 transmitters, saturating the FM radio dial, within it’s short range, playing a range of commissioned pieces [2011];

and finally ‘Sound Wave’ transmitted the sound of a rainbow, to cars passing my house, arriving and leaving town..

"... that there is unique Art without Ai, original creations, congratulations"