anna friz

My little mini-tour of eclectic shows continues…  Arrived in Toronto in time to open the 12th annual Deep Wireless Festival of Radio and Transmission Art, New Adventures in Sound Art‘s yearly exploration of all things wireless.

Tonight: NRRF presents B Radio: Voyage to the Forbidden Planet! B Radio is an ongoing series of radio shows created by the Chicago-based NRRF crew, mashing b-list genres with radio art. Tonight the NRRF cosmo-noise-nauts venture deep into unknown territories: beyond the Van Allen Belt, demoted planetlettes, beyond the heliopause and far away en route to the Forbidden Planet. This translocal performance features yours truly here in Toronto as Ground Control, with Jonny Farrow, Stephen Germana, Jeff Kolar and Peter Speer in the away pods.

NRRF is a collaborative effort to make unlicensed neighbourhood radio. Past incarnations include Radio Free Parkdale in Toronto, NRRF for FTAA in Montreal, and The NRRF Radio Roadshow which traveled from Montreal to New York. The current Chicago-based incarnation consists of Anna Friz, Jonny Farrow, Stephen Germana, Jeff Kolar, and Peter Speer, with occasional guests.

May 1, 2013, 8pm EDST (GMT -5)

Artscape Wychwood Barns, NAISA Space #252, 601 Christie Street, Toronto ON Canada

Tune in for the live stream here.

Documentation from the NRRF B Space Station here.

Audio archive to follow shortly.

No Comments | In: news, performances | tags: anna friz, B Radio, deep wireless festival of radio and transmission art, jeff kolar, jonny farrow, NRRF Radio, peter speer, stephen germana. | #

Heart as Arena created by Dana Gingras/Animals of Distinction, goes to the Centennial Theatre in Sherbrooke and La Rotonde/Centre Méduse in Québec City, April 23 and April 25-27, 2013. I’m the transmission artist/composer for the piece, so I travel with it too to wrangle les ondes radio turbulents.

Setting up the ring of suspended radios for the April 23, 2013 show at the Centennial Theatre, Lennoxville/Sherbrooke, Québec. Photo by dancer and costume designer Sarah Doucet.

No Comments | In: news, performances | tags: animals of distinction, anna friz, centennial theatre bishops university, dana gingras, la rotonde, sound design. | #

Heading out east next week to install/talk/perform as the pre-fest-warm-up for MEGAPOLIS, the fabulous audio art and radio event which takes place periodically in the glorious Turnpike Entity… er… NYC-Bos-Wash sprawl. This year hosted by the New School.

Eric Leonardson and I will be performing together inside one of my multi-channel radio rigs, using springboard, cottage-made instruments, free reeds and free radio.

Saturday April 13, 7:30pm at Union Docs, 322 Union Ave, Brooklyn NY.

No Comments | In: news, performances | tags: anna friz, eric leonardson, Megapolis 2013, performance, transmission art, Union Docs. | #

Currently working in Vienna at Kunstradio, at the ORF Funkhaus, aka at the studios of the Austrian national public radio’s cultural channel. I’ve been composing a 5.1 piece for broadcast on Kunstradio later this spring, made with the best-of radio+timekeeping material that I’ve generated through various longer form radio shows (shout out to Mobile Radio BSP, Second Site, and last year’s live show for Kunstradio for giving me some opportunities to produce the raw materials!) The new piece still lacks a title, but it’s 44 minutes of cuckoo clocks, time transformed by a drone dune, and robotniks misbehaving in the time factory. More info soon.

Upcoming shows:

quota; unquota 1, Salon Bruit, Berlin: Friday Feb 15, 20h, Kino @ K77, Kastanienallee 77 10435 Berlin (also on the bill: Audrey Chen and JD Zazie)

Megapolis NYC: Saturaday April 13, 20h. Union Docs, Brooklyn NYC (performing with Eric Leonardson)

Heart as Arena, Québec tour: remounting the dance performance by choreographer Dana Gingras/Animals of Distinction, with original radiophonic sound design and composition April 23, Centennial Theatre, Sherbrooke; April 25, 26, 27, La Rotonde, centre chorégraphique contemporain de Québec, Québec).

Deep Wireless, Toronto: SOCAN composer in residence at the Deep Wireless Festival– Translocal performance with NRRF and guests, May 1; solo performance at the NAISA space May 4; then giving a keynote talk at the TransX Transmission Art Symposium and performance with Kristen Roos on May 19.

Sounds Like Audio Art Festival 3, Saskatoon:  July 25-27, Paved Arts, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

More dates in the hopper and awaiting cofirmation or funding: a performed installation in Chicago in May at Tri-Triangle/Your Unpleasant Friend, some Australian shows in June with Eric Leonardson and Jay Needham, and ongoing pirate mayhem with the NRRF collective (look for B-Radio info to come).

No Comments | In: news, performances, research | tags: anna friz, ORF Kunstradio, radio art, sound performance. | #

The art and mayhem continues, even with a sugar hangover…. For those of you in the Greene and Columbia counties of New York state, WGXC is rebroadcasting our full NRRF Art’s Birthday radio shenanigans tonight (Saturday, January 19) from 22h to 4h overnight (that’s GMT -5).

ORF Kunstradio is also remixing audio from many different international nodes on January 20 and Feb 17, including some NRRF nuggets.

Flaming cake by Jonny Farrow. Piñata supplied and modified by Jeff Kolar.

Thanks to free103point9 for streaming help on January 17!

No Comments | In: news, transmission | tags: art's birthday, free103point9.org, Kunstradio, NRRF Radio, sugar hangover, WGXC. | #

photo by Julie Shapiro

Who’s Art? Oh, THAT art.

“Art’s Birthday” is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou. One million and fifty years ago today, someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. And so, art was born. Filliou proposed a public holiday to celebrate the presence of art in our lives. In recent years, the idea has been taken up by a loose network of artists and friends around the world. Each year the Eternal Network evolves to include new partners – working with the ideas of exchange and telecommunications-art.

This year it’s the 1,000,050th birthday of art, and I’m getting back into party mode here in Chicago.

First off, running a stream together with absolute value of noise of our newly recomposed generative piece Somewhere a voice is calling. We have rethought the piece as a composition and stream, now made with new material, though the concept remains the same: an exploration of the first broadcasts of the human voice into the transmission ecology over radio by Reginald Fessenden and others beginning in 1906.

Stream runs January 16-18, 2013, and you can listen in here.

Meanwhile, live and fueled by too much sugar, I’ll be hanging out today at the Experimental Sound Studio, which hosts the radio collaboration NRRF Radio in the Audible Gallery from 2pm to 8pm, January 17 (GMT -6).  5925 N. Ravenswood, Chicago.

Transmitting to the neighbourhood and the world via FM and stream LISTEN LIVE HERE.

We’ll be listening and exchanging with any and all birthday streams circulating internationally, and do our best to infiltrate available bands with tenacious earworms and parasitic refrains, powered of course by lurid birthday cake. Glue Banta, Jonny Farrow, Anna Friz, Stephen Germana, Jeff Kolar, Peter Speer, and guests bring the noise.

Drop in, tune in, eat cake. Happy Art’s Birthday! The End is just pretend!

No Comments | In: news, performances, transmission | tags: absolute value of noise, anna friz, art's birthday, eternal network, experimental sound studio, jeff kolar, jonny farrow, lurid cake, NRRF Radio, peter speer, stephen germana. | #

Radios set up for my performance at the opening at the Tsonami Festival de Arte Sonoro, Valparaiso Chile, November 27, 2012.  The venue was an old prison transformed into a cultural centre; here the steep hills of Valpo are visible in the background. I had simply the most wonderful time at this festival of any event in recent memory–the organization really emphasized the social side of holding a festival in addition to top-notch works being presented. And I love love love Valparaiso! You can’t tell from these photos, but it was glorious summer weather, and that Pacific breeze blowing up the hills every day was nothing short of intoxicating.

This and all following photos credited to Nelson Campos.

No Comments | In: news, performances | tags: anna friz, radio art, shameless self-promotion, transmission art, Tsonami Festival de Arte Sonoro. | #

I’ve packed up my radios, and taken them on the road to Valparaiso Chile, for installation and performance at the Tsonami Festival de Arte Sonoro 2012. Many thanks to the whole Tsonami team here, for putting on a really generous event with a great community spirit!

Respire is remounted here as a 3-frequency piece, located in the corridor of the lower access to Ascensor El Peral (there are many ascensors here, which are a kind of outdoor elevator that make it easier to scale the steep hills of Valpo). The radios sway in the Pacific breeze, and chuff and stutter at one another as the fog rolls in to town in the evening. More photos to come soon, but here are a couple from the install, where I had help from an excellent group of installers, including Claudia, Paula (a bit blurry in action in the bottom photo) and head tech for the festival Rodrigo Ríos Zunino:

The piece is open daily November 26 – December 2, 2012, 10h-14h, 16h-22h.

I played the opening night of the festival at the Parque Cultural Valparaiso on Tuesday November 27, 20h. In addition to two stereo pairs of speakers, I also fired up the big transmitter to send to 20 radios suspended over the audience. Two more techie Rodrigos hung them all with the help of a shopping cart…. not pictured is the imperious little black and white feral cat who also followed them around.

Also this week, a new radio piece (50 minutes) unifying some of all the radio and timekeeping projects I’ve been working on for the past two years. It’s called Collecting clocks and losing time, and aired on Monday November 26 at 23h on Radio Valentín Letelier here in Valparaiso on 97.3FM/ 940AM. Here’s a little description:

Once upon a time there was a house on the countryside which housed a hundred clocks. Once upon a time the clocks in every house ran on their own time, and all the trains and hotels and shops had their own time. Once upon a time the time was made universal, divided into zones, and propagated around the globe: it was known as Mean Time. Once upon a time there were microwaves fired at a cesium-12 isotope, and the rate of electron loss dictated the most standardized time of all. Still there were digital devices that did not understand which time zone they lived in. Still everyone was late. Still the clocks began to slowly drag the seconds and minutes and hours behind them. Once upon a time the clocks burned in a fire. Now there are only five that remain.

Finally, I’m joining 3 other artists from the festival to give a short talk on Thursday, November 29, 17h, also at the Parque Cultural Valparaiso; mine perhaps predictably about radio, radio art, and everyday practice.

No Comments | In: installation, news, performances | tags: anna friz, radio art, radio installation, transmission art, Tsonami Festival de Arte Sonoro. | #

I have a new piece showing in Vancouver for the month of November, curated by Peter Courtemanche for An Audio Gallery, which is located at Lucky’s on Main Street.

It’s a 7-channel piece about collecting clocks and losing time, inspired by my late father’s love of cuckoo clocks. I’ve also been composing some radio works using the cuckoo clocks, so expect more cuckoo-cluck in the future.

Once upon a time there was a boy and his younger brother. They were visiting family on the countryside. One day they walked down the lane, past a field and a pasture, until they came to a little house. Inside lived an old lady, and her name was Mrs. Dane. When she opened the door and invited the two boys in, they discovered that her house was far from quiet. Inside the drawing room they saw that her walls were filled with clocks, all sorts of clocks, from floor to ceiling. The boy was especially drawn to the many cuckoo clocks that sang the time every half an hour. Where do they all come from, he asked her, and how do you wind them all? Oh they found me, she said, and sometimes it takes me the whole day to find the time. The boy never forgot Mrs. Dane and her house full of clocks. When he grew up and made his own way in the world, he traveled to a country with deep forests and high mountains, where cuckoo clocks made their home. He found them nesting in the trees, and he collected as many clocks as he could carry to bring home. Some flew away, some traveled by ship, and some were lost in a fire, but he kept as many as he could, and hung them on the walls in his drawing room. When he was an old man, there were just five left. He didn’t mind that the clocks would drift across the day. Their ticking kept him company, and lulled him to sleep at night.

Come and hear/see, Monday – Saturday 12h-18h, Sunday 12h-17h.

Lucky’s  3972 Main Street, Vancouver, British Columbia

Showing until December 9.

Special thanks to Peter Courtemanche for technical assistance.

Hard to tell in this grainy photo, but the lampshade is made of pink feathers.

No Comments | In: installation, news | tags: an audio gallery, anna friz, cuckoo clocks, Five Times (less a hundred), Lucky's, shameless self-promotion, sound installation. | #

October 30-November 4, 2012, I’m here on-site at the radio art radio station set up by Mobile Radio at the 30th São Paulo Bienal. Mobile Radio, aka Knut Aufermann and Sarah Washington, are here for 14 weeks bringing the radio art to the people, and opening the airwaves for an international exchange of radio art, featuring lots of local talent from here in Brasil.

I’m reviving Filibuster, an old show title from back in the day at CiTR Vancouver (in celebration of CiTR‘s 75th anniversary!) which will be a free-form live show full of new stuff, old tales, various collaborations, and generally friendly noise. Also getting up to some new shenanigans modulating and manipulating coordinated universal time under the title Zero Hour. Atomic time will be overcome!

Tune in to my shows (all times São Paulo time, GMT -3)

October 30: 15h – 16h30

First installment of Filibuster— a retrospective of older pieces, including Vacant City Radio (2005) and Silence Descends (1999, works by yours truly, Joelle Ciona, Peter Courtemanche, Sean Chappelle, Eileen Kage and Bill Mullan).

October 31: 13h – 14h

The first installment of Zero Hour:

November 1: 16h – 18h

Today was cuckoo clocks a-go-go on Zero Hour, followed by Filibuster, which included rebroadcast of Dancing Walls Stir the Prairie, created together with Eric Leonardson in 2007. Also, a new installment of the M.O.L.E.C.A.S.T., BSP edition…. Uncover at the Exhibition, Level 1.

November 2: 15h – 15h30, 15h30 – 18h with Tonic Train live in studio

First, another installment of the Zero Hour–30 minutes of manipulated clock time.

Then another episdoe of Filibuster, beginning with several pieces by Central Dispatch (2002), all recorded on the day that Brazil won the World Cup Football, final score 2-0; followed by speculative conversation regarding Atlantis, ley lines, the 13th Node, Tesla, the coming Armageddon, the quickening of time, the reversal of the Earth’s rotation, and whale radio; followed by a live set of yours truly and Tonic Train.

The Zero Hour runs overnight, 19h Nov 2 until 12h Nov 3.

November 3: 13h – 14h

Filibuster features the M.O.L.E.C.A.S.T BSP.: Undercover at the Exhibition, Level 2.

November 4: 12h – 12h30

Filibuster features the final M.O.L.E.C.A.S.T. BSP: Uncover at the Exhibition, Level 3.

Tune in at mobile-radio.net

Shows archived here

Mobile Radio BSP runs 24/7 until December 9, so keep your browser locked to the signal!

No Comments | In: news, performances, transmission | tags: anna friz, filibuster radio show, mobile radio bsp, radio art, shameless self-promotion, tonic train, zero hour. | #