anna friz » transmission art

The Lost and Found

annafriz — Tue, 11 May 2010 16:10:26 +0000

E.C. Woodley and I have an interesting side project going titled after his long-running radio show on CKLN 88.1FM here in Toronto. He brings the records from his most recondite collection (featuring spoken word and misc. arcana pressed to vinyl back when the top speed was 78 rpm) to sample in long form, and I bring the glorious noise of radio world, all spatialized into three vertical layers of sound.

Our most recent gig was at the opening of Deep Wireless on May 1, 2010, and the above photos are from our previous outing at Mercer Union’s “Music in Alternative Spaces” in July 2009 (both locations in Toronto). Our set-up riffs on traditional radio listening (the big central radio around which the audience gathers), as well as my multi-channel tactics (in this case, an array of hanging radios, and speakers above the radios in the ceiling).

Here’s how the official line on what we’re up to:

“The Lost and Found” is an ongoing collaboration between Anna Friz and E.C. Woodley to explore phenomenologies of recording, radio, and electricity, and the materiality of the transmission environment. Woodley uses three turntables to work with curious recordings, giving preference to these sounds as discrete entities, an audio equivalent to the approach Canadian visual artist Greg Curnoe used in his collages of the ‘60’s. Friz adds VLF, shortwave, interfrequency static, and live electronics to the mix, and spatializes the sound via multi-channel micro-radio transmission to an array of vintage receivers. “The Lost and Found” convenes a communal ritual of radio listening, and promises an evening lost and found voices heard in the dark corners of the radio dial.

Friz and Woodley met in 2005 over an impromptu collaboration on Woodley’s long-running radio program (also named “The Lost and Found”) on CKLN-FM in Toronto. Woodley has also written music for many films including Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” and his brother Aaron Woodley’s “Rhinoceros Eyes”, “Toronto Stories” and “Tennessee”.

I know, I know, another scene of sound artists pouring over gear on a table. At least we sit off to the side, so people can choose if they want to watch us twiddle our knobs or not. For the Deep Wireless gig we had the lighting adjusted better than in these photos, and I also replaced the Grundig Emergency radios in the array with a series of bigger transistor radios from the late 60s-early 70s (Nordmende Globetrotter, Transita, and Corvette; plus a Bel-Air and a Panasonic).

And it’s winter time again….

annafriz — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:45:45 +0000

When not mucking around in the snow with a microphone, I’m toiling away deep in the Nice Little Static Laboratories (possibly in my work pajamas, though rumours are unconfirmed) to produce some sounds for spring. Most pressing: dissertation chapters! And CD projects, including completing one with Eric Leonardson that we began about 2 years ago and which will include the complete suite Dancing Walls Stir the Prairies (band names also up for consideration, if y’all have good ideas), as well as putting the finishing touches on Short Horizon, which I hope to launch in March.

Meanwhile, here’s a little shot of the old antenna far above the house….. just because it’s pretty.

Open Studio at Gibraltar Point for 100th and 10th Anniversary Party

annafriz — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:09:45 +0000

I’ll be holding an open studio on Friday September 25 (6-10PM) and Saturday September 26 (12-5PM) for the 100th and 1oth anniversary events at Artscape Gibraltar Point Arts Centre here on the Toronto Island where I’ve been camped out making art for September. Friday night promises to be a magical evening, with the Shadowland Puppet folks leading a procession from the Centre Island ferry to Gibraltar Point at 5:30PM. For all the details, check out Artscape’s site.

I’ll be showing the in-process version of Respire, which will be installed shortly after at Nuit Blanche, October 3, 2009 here in Toronto! Come listen to the little radios breathing in the dark…. I’m in the portables out back of the Arts Centre at Gibraltar Point, so come on by and say hello!

Here’s a shot of radios hanging in my little studio:

special transmission art issue of PAJ

annafriz — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:49:46 +0000

PAJ: A Journal of Performance Art (MIT Press) invited free103point9.org to contribute a special section on transmission arts. A few of us free103 regulars weighed in on the topic for issue 93, published September 2009– with Joe Milutis, myself, and Tom Roe writing about the past, present, and future of transmission art, respectively. My piece, “Transmission Art in the Present Tense” considers the much-cited legacy of Brecht in light of the emerging craft of transmission. Other contributions include Brett Ian Balogh’s FM interface-in-progress, and Lex Bhagat’s “Instructions for How to Listen to Radio”.

The transmission arts section is readable for free online, and includes some audio and projects in full colour. click here to read it all.

Going west to Respire

annafriz — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:05:00 +0000

I’ll be back in the business of hanging radios in a week: going out west to perform Respire at the Surrey Arts Centre for their Sound Thinking 2009 symposium (Feb 28), then journeying on up to Kamloops and the Thompson Rivers University for a little presentation and performance there (March 2-4), hosted by Ashok Mathur, Canada Research Chair and Director for the Centre for Innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada. After that it’s back down south to California, to do a peformance and lecture at the Centre for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University (March 10).

There will be ladders. There will be batteries.