Constellations of Listening
22 hour radio broadcast on Radio Art Zone, 12 Aug 2022 from 2pm CEST - 13 Aug 2022 at midday
Over the course of 22 hours during Radio Art Zone, listeners tuned into Shortwave Collective engaged in collective and solitary listening experiences as we searched for radio reception through Open Wave-Receivers and other devices such as VHF and VLF receivers, software-defined radio, walkie-talkies, and electromagnetic detectors. Our collective material was sourced over many months and seasons, and across different time zones, from listening sites that connect environments, technologies and voices. Each recording was broadcast at (or close to) the hour it was originally heard.
In two live sessions taking place during the Perseids meteor shower, Shortwave Collective members filtered recordings made by the group through their home environments: between 18:00-18:30 CEST on Friday 12th August from a garden in Crete, and 11:00-11:30 CEST on Saturday 13th August from a mountain in the south of France. Our 22 hours concluded from the garden in Crete for the final half hour.
Constellations of Listening is available in full on Radio Art Zone's archive. The first hour of our 22 hour broadcast is available on Soundcloud (below) and was part of the Tsonami Festival of Sound Arts in Chile in December 2022.
Our work constructing ‘Open Wave-Receivers’ (self-powered radio receivers made from readily available and found materials) brings into focus the site-and-time specificity of radio reception. We experiment with designs that incorporate the physicalities of an immediate space into the circuit - such as coils wrapped around roof tiles, ground wires connected to garden taps, and antennas attached to fences - all of which set the circuit within a specific location. By listening over time, we notice the atmospheric and environmental influences on radio reception. We think of these and other radio devices in-situ as part of a larger constellation of bodies, materiality, and connection experienced through listening.
Constellations of Listening is available in full on Radio Art Zone's archive. The first hour of our 22 hour broadcast is available on Soundcloud (below) and was part of the Tsonami Festival of Sound Arts in Chile in December 2022.
Our work constructing ‘Open Wave-Receivers’ (self-powered radio receivers made from readily available and found materials) brings into focus the site-and-time specificity of radio reception. We experiment with designs that incorporate the physicalities of an immediate space into the circuit - such as coils wrapped around roof tiles, ground wires connected to garden taps, and antennas attached to fences - all of which set the circuit within a specific location. By listening over time, we notice the atmospheric and environmental influences on radio reception. We think of these and other radio devices in-situ as part of a larger constellation of bodies, materiality, and connection experienced through listening.