“Improvised Radio” presented by Grundmann

Symposium:


Session Title:
  • Sonic Boom

Presentation Title:
  • Improvised Radio

Abstract:

  • Radio is everywhere. Radio sound is everywhere. The sound of radio is the sound of our time. We have become so accustomed to the presence of the sound of radio in our private spaces that we hardly notice it. For most of us the radio has become a friend, a companion for the driver, for the solitary worker, for the invalid. For many it is often an unwanted and unavoidable intrusion. Unavoidable because it has become a natural sound, always potentially present waiting to be heard. The voices of strangers from distant places wake us in the morning, bring us information about distant events, persuade us to buy things. Popular music is radio music. Radio music is the same wherever the radio is heard. Radio sound is everywhere on the planet and it is always the same sound. Radio sound. Radio is the instrument of our time.
    The ‘Kunstradio’ presentation will discuss how the instrument radio is changing under the impact of digitalisation and the new communications technologies and how this instrument is being played by artists. Since 1990 there has been a series of international radio art projects involving many artists working simultaneously in different physical and media spaces around the globe. They have been developing an image of what radio and the sound of media are becoming in the age of the convergence of mass media, telecommunications and the computer. Kunstradio – originally just a weekly radio-art programme on the National Austrian Radio ORF – has become one of the crystallization points of artistic production in this new on air – on line – on site context.

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