Back in November 2023, we had collective discussions in response to prompts proposed by Agnès Pe, who then beautifully edited together this podcast titled 'Is There Really a Place on Radio for Experimentation?'. Listen here: ​https://radio.museoreinasofia.es/there-really-place-radio-experimentation

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. 

The Western Balkans branch of forumZFD invited us to participate in a series of events taking place in partnership with CRiSAP at the Centre for Narrative Research in Pristina, Kosovo. We delivered a hybrid workshop in September 2023, building Open Wave-Receivers with MA students, supporting their ongoing exploration of sound, memory and public space.

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...​

As part of Hackoustic's All Day-er, we ran an Open Wave-Receiver workshop at Ikectik in London on 17th June 2023. Participants scavenged the site and made some new designs, picking up LBC Radio from Archbishop's Park in Waterloo, London.

SONCITIES research project invited us to lead a workshop with University of Oxford students in April and to present radio work at the EMPRES research group's late event at Modern Art Oxford in May.

We made 10 new Open Wave-Receiver radios with students and embarked on an urban listening experiment in Oxford's city centre, connecting our radios to fences, posts and bins in order to listen through and with the city. 

Following our workshop, the students made new compositions with the radios, for exhibition at Modern Art Oxford on May 25th in the Art of Noises late night event. This late event is led by the EMPRES research group and responds to to Carey Young's solo show ‘Appearance’, which explores themes of power dynamics, relationships to space, text, feminism, and institutions of justice. What a great environment to be sharing our feminist radio practice in!

​Join us at Modern Art Oxford on May 25th, 6.30-10pm. The info and tickets (free) will be available online here soon.

We're delighted to be working with: Sonorous Cities: Towards a Sonic Urbanism (SONCITIES) a research project at University of Oxford formed at the intersection of sound, urbanism, and critical spatial practices; The University of Oxford’s Electronic Music Practice RESearch group (EMPRES) who aim to promote and advance research and public dissemination in Electronic Music Practice; and Modern Art Oxford who are renowned for their bold, progressive and international artistic programme that promotes culturally diverse viewpoints from around the world. ​

Soundcamp is a free sound and ecology festival at Stave Hill Ecological Park, London, over the Dawn Chorus Day weekend. It's our favourite event of the year, as Shortwave Collective was formed during a workshop taking place there in 2020. Three of us led an Open Wave-Receiver building workshop at Soundcamp 10, and a record 42 radios were made and tested!

We were back at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, on 10th March 2023, delivering a workshop making Open Wave-Receivers with BA & MA Sound Arts students. 32 radios were made, though testing was brief due to freezing weather!

Liverpool-based radio station Melodic Distraction broadcast an extended version of our piece 'Open Wave-Receiver' on 8th March, at 10pm (UK-time).  The piece is an audio how-to guide, sharing our experiments with DIY radio. ​

In March 2023, we ran an Open Wave-Receiver workshop with Bradford Sound Women's Network at Fuse Art Space, West Yorkshire (UK). Participants brought scavenged parts, and made some innovative designs include a weaving-kit radio and a whale toy radio. Though freezing, we spent a little time hooking them up around town, catching Radio 'Five Live' in amongst intriguing feedback sounds. 

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. 

For the 20th edition of Pikselfest, an annual event for Electronic Art and Technological Freedom in Bergen Norway, we had the pleasure of hosting two Open Wave-Receiver radio making workshops, and having a micro-residency for the collective (aka a unique opportunity for 6 of us to be together simultaneously and connect digitally with the rest of the collective) 

For the workshop we foraged for found materials around Bergen, looking things to include into the radios as coils or diodes. This resulted in a branch and a vacuum cleaner tube both being used  as the objects for the coil to be wrapped around, and working really well (the latter as a very open spacious coil!).

Our listening spot, up the side of one of the many hills in the city, gave us textured radio static and one or two talk radio stations to listen to in the freezing cold darkness just after sunset. On the side of the open wave-radio testing we had a play with a VLF antenna, held in a loop by a group of people who danced around with it, this tuned us into a vibrant texture of humming and the occasional click of sferics - natural radio emissions from lightning!

Our work 'How to make an Open Wave-Reciever' was aired at 10pm CET on Sunday 30th October 2022 for the @radioart106 show produced by soundinista Meira Asher on @rebootfm. Listen > 88,4 MHz in Berlin & 90,7 MHz in Potsdam. Live Stream > https://radio.net/s/rebootfm

Resonance FM are broadcasting our series 'Constellations of Listening'  on Saturdays at 8pm. 22 episodes record our searches for radio reception via homemade radios, EMF, VLF, VHF scanners and other radio devices over many months and across time zones, from listening sites connecting environments, technologies and voices. Listen out on Saturdays on 104.4 FM in central London, or online here: 
​https://www.resonancefm.com/programmes/635289ca50000bdb18000001

In October 2022, we were on the Phantom Power podcast, for an episode called '(Re)Making Radio with Shortwave Collective'! Host Mack Hagood brought us on deck to talk about our history as a collective, and then featured the Open-Wave Reciever audio piece. You can listen on the Phantom Power site, or right here on our site (scroll to the bottom).

On 29th September, we spent the day at Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridge (UK) making Open Wave-Receivers with d/deaf young people supported by the Sensory Support Service. Nine teenagers made radios and explored the gorgeous grounds at Wysing, searching for  signals. The session was part of a wider project led by one of our Shortwave members, for 'A Language of Holes' - a series considering access in galleries initiated by Voices in the Gallery. 

Take a look at our awesome radio making packs - we put these together for each person coming to make a radio at our workshops.

​These were first developed for our workshop at Soundcamp (London, UK) 2022 and used in subsequent workshops including Listening in ... at the Library (Liverpool, UK) 2022

Listening in…at the Library is a project based at Sefton Libraries (Liverpool, UK) that 'tries to extend our ears into places they cannot get to, to listen to voices that we might not ordinarily hear, unburdened by preconceptions around how things look'.

Listening in... invited us to run a workshop showing local residents how to build an Open Wave-Reciever on Thursday 15th September 2022 at Crosby Library. We shared our radio recipes and then searched for radio transmissions, new and surprising experiences of the radio spectrum!

The workshop was a collaborative listening experiment, with participants hooking up their radios in special sites around Crosby. We experimented with super long antennas that were swung, hung and thrown. New types of diodes were tested, from silver rings to glasses, two pence coins and even a pair of pliers, plus the  many ways that we became part of the circuit too - as the antenna, the diode and the ground!

Talk Sport radio station was consistently loud ... there must be an antenna boosting the signal near by, but come grey line time (sunset or sunrise) hopefully the radios set up at home will start to hear the magic of the Open Wave-Receiver - multiple layers of transmission all at once! (At "grey line" radio transmission moved more easily around the globe, bouncing off the ionosphere, meaning more radio can be heard). Everyone left with their radios, so we're looking forward to hearing more. 

For added listening fun, we put together some late night VLF (very low frequency radio waves) antennas to explore the lower end of the radio spectrum, and we rigged these up at the end of the day for a little listen. We're also very pleased to find that the thinner width of this cable works just as well as the thicker cable, which significantly reduced the price of these! Success! The next step is to find an electrical recycling point from which we can source second hand cables rather than buying new.... Let us know if you'd like instuctions on how to make one of these.​

Thanks for having us Dave, Faye, Jodie and all at the library!

We had the pleasure of joining Amanda Gutierrez and the group at Sono-(soro)rities, Materia Labo, Montreal, to talk about our Shortwave Collective feminist ways of working with radio. Thanks so much for the invitation Amanda :)

Had a very nice chat yesterday with Mack Hagood for an upcoming episode of Phantom Power podcast!

Great to connect about making radios, listening, failure, fragility, collective & feminist processes, constellations, sci-fi, sunlight, meteors and lightning .. amongst other things :)

Stay tuned for the podcast episode coming out in October.

Mack will also be making Open Wave-Receivers with his students at at Miami University, Ohio - looking forward to seeing and hearing these in action.