Shortwave Collective were invited to present our work in making DIY radio recievers at 'Strange Tramissions', a salon organised by The Wire magazine and the avant-radio label World Service, held at our favourite Cafe Oto in Dalston. We spoke about the Open Wave-Receiver, managed to find signal in a live demo, and then took part in a panel discussion, alongside live performanes and music by our friends, The evening was broadcast live on Resonance Extra! 

On 26th April, we hosted an 'art chat' at Tate Modern, as part of their series Tate Lates. The theme of the event was 'sonic disruption', to coincide with the launch of Aura Satz's Preemptive Listening film earlier in the week and the Yoko Ono exhibition on display. 

During the chat, we offered some thoughts on DIY methods, collectivity and sharing. There were lots of engaging questions from the audience, and the room was packed! The talk was also live-streamed, and is now archived on Tate's YouTube (we're on at 01:14:30).

Cooinciding with their exhibition, Tate Britain hosted a two-day conference on performance-based arts, sound and moving image practices that were an integral part of feminist creative and campaigning activities of the 1970s and 1980s.

Shortwave Collective presented as part of the Beyond Her Noise: Feminisms and the Sonic panel, convened by Creative Research into Sound Arts (CRiSAP). Our contribution took shape as a performance-talk where the four of us able to be there in person took it in turns to read a new paper, collectively authored for the event, with amplified interjections from Shortwave members contributing remotely.

We also riso-printed 100 Open Wave-Reciever how-to zines and gave these away at the welcome desk - these were much appreciated!

The Orpheus Institute invited us to be part of their Sound Arguments laboratory-atelier series in Belgium this month. We enjoyed spending two days with this group or artists, musicians and researchers, doing some shortwave practice together in Ghent.

We began with a radio building session, where all 25 attendees built their own Open Wave-Receiver radios (OWR) and followed this with listening and discussion sessions.

In the listening session every radio was first tested, before groups went out into the city to explore the urban landscape and the listening possibilities there. Listening experiments included using the river as a ground, a stick and a hair band as an antenna stretching device, connecting with fences and lampposts, and throwing the antenna high into the air. Many things were heard including talk radio, music, mains electricity, data packets, and the fuzzes and buzzes of electromagnetic radio waves.

Regrouping at the Orpheus institute, each group discussed their listening explorations and the urban conditions that they encountered. As a group we then listened to a short excerpt of an OWR recording taken by the collective at 'grey line' on the summer solstice in Scotland, the recording includes sferics and the gentle appearance of radio stations that seemingly float in on the waves of an electromagnetic tide.

Our final time together was spent discussing the idea of hearing our connection to our environments, just as we do with our OWR's and the 'constellations of listening' that inform their use. We asked the groups to discuss how, in their own artistic practices, they can also hear their connection to their surroundings?

We are in a book! Edited by Sarah Washington, Radio Art Zone explores the central themes, concepts and techniques of artist-made radio. It brings to the page live long-form works from the world’s largest exhibition of radio art, which took place as part of the European Capital of Culture Esch22. Interspersed with micro-essays on radio form, practice and poetics, and illustrated throughout with unique images, the book performs an exquisite transformation from airwaves to paper and provides a treasury of ideas about radio as art.

To celebrate the launch, we took part in an evening even at the London launch, 4th November 2023 at Iklectik Art Lab. Artists involved with the original Radio Art Zone radio art festival in 2022 delivered short performances, broadcast live on Resonance Extra. Two of our members read out a collection of listening experiences, overlaid with sounds collected from our radio-listening experiments. 

We travelled to West Yorkshire in August 2023 to speak at the Wuthering Bytes festival of technology in Hebden Bridge. 
Info here: ​https://wutheringbytes.com/whatson/festival-day

Shortwave Collective recently worked on a new commission for Struer Tracks, a biennial of sound and listening in Struer, Denmark. In the lead up to the festival, we were supported by volunteers from technology company Bang & Olfsen, based in Struer, as remote resident artists. We were able to make use of the company's e-waste during the project and build DIY amplifiers.

Throughout the biennial, we ran a Living Radio Lab, inviting visitors into the process of developing and listening with Open Wave-Receivers – simple radio receiving devices that provide site- and time-specific access to the sounds travelling on the invisible electromagnetic waves surrounding us. The lab was open from 23rd-27th August 2023. Please see our project page for more...​

Shortwave Collective hosted a lecture for LCC's Sound Arts 'visiting practitioner' series on 19th January 2023 (UK time). The talk was aimed at BA, MA and PhD Sound Arts students, with external guests joining online.