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  • Cashmere Radio

Experimental Radio Practice

On Friday 10 July students of the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts program at UdK will be on air with new works for live radio. Between 8:20-09:00 and 16:00-00:45, here and on FM 88.4 MHz in Berlin and FM 90.7 Mhz in Potsdam.
Participating artists:
Lara Gallagher, Ben Glas, Árni Valur Kristinsson, Endre Vazul Mandli, Antonino Modica, Arnau Montserrat, Hayden Prosser, Federica Sosta, Nicolas Teubal, Vito Willems.
The broadcast is part of the ‘Experimental Radio Practice’ Seminar led by Lukas Grundmann.

Full program:

08:20: My body is a temple by Lara Gallagher
Using techniques of auscultation and biofeedback ‘My body is a temple’ will exteriorize the sounds of a performers body undertaking a near impossible physical workout. The workout will take the form of a musical score that instructs the performing body to move and breath in a specific way. The score will allow the performer to partake in a form of biofeedback, involving mind-body techniques where the performer uses auditory feedback to gain control over involuntary bodily functions. Sounds of the gut, mouth, lungs and chest of the performer will be amplified. The piece will explore limitations – a live physical body under extreme duress, the pseudo-intimacy created when amplifying bodily sounds, radio as an artistic medium. Using semiotics to control the emotion behind the performance ‘My body is a temple’ strives to place the listener in a state of internal reflection, forcing them to listen inwards becoming aware of a range of emotional states. A piece devoid of visual stimuli may ask the listener to become aware of their own tensions, vibrations, physical matter and limitations.

16:00: Score For a Memory Palace by Ben Glas
is a text based meditative composition, based on an ancient mnemonic tool dubbed “the Method Of Loci”. The “Method Of Loci” is the practice of recalling events, objects or persons through a spatial mnemonic visualization. The practitioner would envision a space they know well and would place what they desired to remember within this introspective visualization. Ancient Greco and Roman philosophers, statesmen and orators would mentally construct a space in their mind and place these events, objects or persons in their “memory palace” via the abstract objectification of said memories. Other names and variants for this memory technique are called “the Roman Room” or “the Journey Method”.
This composition will set listeners up for a deep listening experience and the chance to compose their own perception using this technique.

16:15 and 17:25: Jingle Hell by Árni Valur Kristinsson
Jingle Hell is a special place where all the bad little jingles go once they get rejected, exiled or ejected from the airwaves.
Upon their arrival the Jingles are ushered into the arrival hall where they shall remain for their first days / weeks.
During this period some of the Jingles begin to drift out of phase, others will distort, a few get stretched but all eventually become out of touch before they finally are out of time.
In short, the piece is a live transmission from a Soundwalk through the wondrous untamed wilderness of the (soon to be national-park) Jingle Hell.
During the two 15 minute long excursions the artist will be lending you, the listener, his ears+. Furthermore, with the assist of modern technology, we are able to deliver the piece completely void of the artists / explorers presence as well as other participants making the experience a private one from the listeners POV.
Read the full description of both tours, the performance, facts and fables here.

16:30: Latent Transmission by Antonino Modica
“Latent Transmission” is a performative sound work developed with radio technology, to be performed live on radio. Building upon personal practice and experience in feedback techniques, the main aim of the performance is to highlight the sonic aesthetics and limitations of FM-transmitted audio signals through the exploitative and artistic use of feedback networks, radio interference and recursive processes.
The piece is performed on an electronic setup consisting of various independent feedback networks with multiple stages (including delays, compressors and gating devices); one of these networks includes an FM transmitter and a receiver: these two are set to transmit and receive on very close, but not exactly the same, frequency bands, bringing forward radio noise as basic sonic material for the performance and as initiator of the feedback loops. The preexisting original broadcast is constantly fighting with the radio noise and interferences caused by the slight deviation in transmission frequency, generating unpredictable, often chaotic signals that are fed back into the system.
Through real time multiband signal analysis, radio noise also becomes a control signal for the devices included in the feedback network, resulting in a complex behavior to which the performer has to constantly react and adapt.
The fundamental idea of this electroacoustic system is the instability of the transmission itself, creating a constant dialogue between a preexisting public broadcast and the artificial interferences, the often overwhelming static noise that occasionally lets through sounds from radio shows and news, creating over time an alienated soundscape where the medium and its contents are not distinguishable anymore.

18:00: Current Affairs by Nicolas Teubal
“Where does data end and ideology begin?” (Slavok Zizek, Pandemic!, 2020)
Covid-19 has brought into our lives an overpopulation of news broadcasting media, experts and ignorants alike with air time on their hands use it to voice their opinions and concerns. On the other hand, audiences in lockdown find themselves with an overload of dead time and an eagerness to be informed on developments in different locations of the world.
It is of common knowledge that every media group has its own ideology, social, political and economic pressures which in turn dictate what the agenda will look like, generating a multiplicity of conflicting ideologies overflowing the media realm. This has the potential of triggering fear and anxiety.
Current Affairs attempts at a deconstruction of the media in real-time, through deterritorialisation of language, using words not as signifiers but as elements in a composition based on their acoustical properties. Taking live radio news broadcasting from different countries, languages and cultures in real time, using them as raw material and transforming them into loops in an improvised manner through the use of a sampler instrument, the piece reflects on ambiguity and uncertainty, while creating a composition that holds aesthetic ties both with musique concrète and contemporary electronic dance music.

18:10 (Pt I), 19:30 (Pt II) and 20:45 (Pt 3): Home and Other Spaces by Hayden Prosser
Radio continues to be a strong medium for representing community and nurturing cultural interrelations and expanded listening. Home and Other Spaces aims to give Cashmere Radio listeners the possibility to reflect on our current individual living and listening experience and have these spaces introduced as a group listening live on air. The piece is presented as three sets of instructions or movements.
Due to the pandemic, we have all become well acquainted with our homes or temporary living situations, wherever we are in the world. The need for communication over distance is brought back to focus, with contemporary technology becoming ever more relied on. Radio, one of the first mediums used for long distance communication, still retains its place through mass momentary listening and thought sharing. By encouraging listeners to participate, a collective effort is brought to focusing on our separate banal yet intriguing sounding surroundings and on to the shared experience through radio.
Participants can become performers by opting to choose one or more of the three instructions presented to them. Their experience is to be recorded and forwarded on for collection to build a second performance; an airing of the recordings live on Cashmere Radio. This will showcase the similarities and contrasts through a single channel. In this way a group experience is created where participants will hear their sounds fusing and diverging, their solitary performance happening in tandem with others (and perhaps reenacting the experience of their space). For those tuning in, different spatial experiences appear; ones that also merge with the space of the listener.
To see the instructions, please click here.

18:45: PachaMama Resort by Arnau Montserrat
Ayahuasca, also known as Yagé (Colombia) and Caapi (Brasil), is a South American entheogenic brew commonly prepared by boiling torn leaves of the Psychotria viridis shrub and stalks of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine in water. It is said that on the western side of the Amazon basin there are more than 700 different ways of preparing this medicine and that each indigenous culture that inhabits this territory has its own way of conceiving Ayahuasca. The potion has been used for Curanderos as a traditional spiritual medicine in ceremonies among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin for religious and spiritual practices, usually focus on healing, warfare, divination and cultural purposes.
In the late 20th century, the use of this medicine began spreading to Europe, North America and elsewhere as a cure for addictions and depression. It is also used as recreational purposes. For these practices, the consumption of these plants has increased dramatically in recent years, exploiting the lands and the ancestral customs.
PachaMama Resort is a live sound composition that reflects the characteristic soundscape of an Ayahuasca ceremony but with the influence of the west culture and the new technologies. Before the composition, we will interview Daniel Miceli, a facilitator who spent more than a year in different retreats as a guide and assistant in the ayahuasca ceremonies, working side by side with shamans from different regions. In addition, Daniel will contribute to the piece with his voice and his instrument, Reise-Didgeridoo. Have a good trip!

19:45 and 23:30: Blowing in the wind by andyvazul (Endre Vazul Mandli)
Blowing in the wind is a long durational, radio art piece based on the idea of live streaming webcams.
During the entire broadcast the basis of the sound material is provided by the wind as it blows the Disharmonika, my self-made instrument, or in this application a sound statue made of recycled harmonicas. In order to catch the strongest wind I do the live broadcast on top of Teufelsberg, the second highest spot in Berlin. I start the live broadcast presenting the Disharmonika and the way it works. Then I use different texts, poems and mythological stories of the wind and its role in the Earth’s ecological system and read them up. As part of the radio art piece I talk about the history of Teufelsberg, the location from which I do the live broadcast.
Between the texts there are pauses and these pauses by time become longer. After a while all texts disappear and only the wind blows the Disharmonika. This constantly changing, ambient wind sound remains for the whole night.

21:00: RITUAL/POLITICAL by Francis Sosta
RITUAL/POLITICAL aims to provide a space for reflection on the current global state of being, by holding a space/time for metaphysical coming together. RITUAL/POLITICAL interrogates the medium of Radio to be, once more, that laboratory for awareness and social change that has been in the past, by keeping on generating counter-hegemonic knowledge, exchange and new forms of thoughts and agency. By inviting the listeners to take part in a radio-ritual, RITUAL/POLITICAL aims to encourage a practice of micro-activism, of listening and resilience in time of crisis. By recognizing in the practice of ritual-making a fundamental moment of integration and collective transformation, RITUAL/POLITICAL wants to connects different subjectivities in order to enable a process of political healing, meaning-making and collective transmutation by listening.

22:22: Governors of the Aether by in.finit
Radiowaves, energetic forces, continuously in motion, ever shifting and transforming, waves that are implied in our contemporary forms of electronic media, part of our all day communication. Similarly as our visual perception is carried by the waves of light, our thoughts propagated by electrical connections in our brains, electromagnetic waves are all translucent forces that consist of infinite oscillations, attracting and resisting, transmuting into actual, perceivable forms. The entropy of electromagnetism, a collection of energetic forces that goes beyond our spatiotemporal perceptions, is a source of life that animates our worldly existence. However, an unknown realm is from where this entropy departs.
Alchemy, the hermetic practice of natural philosophy and foundation of early physics, discussed about the 5th element of life, the Aether. Besides the classical elements water, earth, air and fire, this element is a form of matter that was believed to fill the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere. This substance of divinity is infused in our world, the immortal soul of all organic creatures, the driving force that animates matter with spiritual essence. A theory of the genesis of this spiritual substance derives from the dynamic interaction between celestial regions and the heavenly bodies.
“Governors of the Aether” is the poiesis and the potential of interconnectedness between planetary bodies and the substance of divinity, the Aether. Questioning its spatiotemporal and poetic qualities through live transmission, it explores the space in-between performer and listener, the Aether of radio, the air of waves, the electromagnetic entropy. In here the airtime is a territory for a cosmic and universal stage traveling through seven radios as the houses, bodies and governors of the play. Transcending the division of spacetime by charging the bodies with recordings of electromagnetism, collecting realtime electromagnetic information that shapes the entropy and translocalizing it over a multiplicity of spaces, the spaces of the listeners. http://dharmainitiatives.net