anna friz

That’s right, is time for another episode of NRRF B Radio, broadcast live (87.9FM) from the mighty Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, and streamed from Wavefarm radio/Transmission Arts in New York state.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014.  11:00-14:00 Central Daylight Savings Time (GMT -5), listen in on WGXC New York on Thursday, April 17, 2014, 0:05-2:20.

The Electric Earth

The Frosty and Frothy NRRF Pirates have found themselves and their trusty schooner locked on a course DUE SOUTH owing to a badly malfunctioning compass. As they approach what appears to be the frozen, southern polar landmass, they suddenly discover that their ship is no longer moving. They are immobilized by the pack ice, so they decide to sing songs while quickly finishing off the rum. In their stupor, the crew encounters one very smelly and dreadfully lost Ijiraq which causes them to vacate the boat and immediately become lost on the ice where they experience many strange sensations and illusions: an unsettling shift in gravity, rings around the sun, a very convincing fata morgana, and several frightening aural hallucinations, all of which confuse them further. As they press forward to nowhere, the ice or permafrost begins to give way under their feet in a glorious thaw. Is the land melting away? Eventually the crew finds magnificent caverns filled with crystalline formations that seem to be connected to a giant electric ray transmitter. What is this strange world? A mirage? Madness? A secret military installation? Or the solution to the world’s fossil fuel addiction? The fearless crew are all frozen in static, and we wonder, what could possibly happen next?!?

NRRF is a collaborative effort to make unlicensed neighborhood radio art. B Radio mashes b-list film and pulp fiction genres with radio art to structure the improvisational nature of the shows. It’s live radio, streamed, with special guests and live audience. The core group consists of Jonny Farrow, Anna Friz, Steve Germana, Jeff Kolar, and Peter Speer.

No Comments | In: news, performances, transmission | tags: anna friz, B Radio, Electric Earth, experimental sound studio, jeff kolar, jonny farrow, NRRF, peter speer, Pirate Radio, radio art, stephen germana, Wavefarm/Transmission Arts. | #

I’m hurtling across the corn fields of downstate Illinois on the train at the moment, through a decidedly un-spring-like landscape that is just thinking of coming back to life after the long winter here. I’m on my way to do some work with Jay Needham, Associate Professor in the Radio, Television, and Digital Media Department at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale IL. I’ll be giving a lecture in the department tomorrow (10 April) on research creation and transmission art, entitled Radio is not a Container. Jay and I are preparing for our lecture-performance Zero Hour at Art+Communication: Fields in Riga, Latvia, in May this year. And we’ll be firing up the mics for a radio party with some grad students later this weekend. Woot!

Also coming up, a new episode of NRRF: B Radio from 11:00-14:00 (CDST, Chicago time) on 16 April, streaming and broadcasting live from the Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago, and streamed/rebroadcast by WGXC Transmission Arts, NY. The intrepid crew reunites to explore The Electric Earth.

Finally, I’ll be passing through Montreal the last week in April, so stay tuned for another collaboration by Ghost Imbiss.

Yes, that’s a bit of leftover snow on the ground.

No Comments | In: news, performances, transmission | tags: anna friz, Ghost Imbiss, jay needham, NRRF B Radio, the electric earth, zero hour. | #

I have the great pleasure of playing together with Maja Osojnik this weekend in Vienna. She’s a vibrant performer and composer who uses a broad palette of instruments electronic and acoustic, including her voice.

Saturday March 1, 2014   20:00,    e  c  h  o  r  a  u  m     Sechshauser Straße 66  Vienna

We’ll be playing solo sets, and a set together, using a pile of electronics, instruments, voices, radio, cassettes, and all. My set will be focused on my current favourite sample, the zero hour….

We played together on Art’s Birthday (January 17, 2014) in a translocal exchange over the interwebs between Vienna-Ljubljana, produced by ORF Kunstradio and radioCONA, which you can listen to here.

No Comments | In: news, performances | tags: anna friz, audio art, echoraum, experimental music, maja osojnik, the zero hour. | #

A train and a ferry ride away from Berlin, and I find myself in Copenhagen, Danmark this week for a series of events, thanks to the enthusiastic curatorial efforts of Jan Høgh Stricker and Anne Clement and KNTN.

Tonight (7. February, 2014) I’m performing together with Konrad Korabiewski (that’s us in action above) at the noise bunker known as Mayhem, Ragnhildgade 1 Kbh NV. Doors at 20:00, opening acts Hannibal Andersen and David Maranha, though we will be performing second. We’ll be using a multi-channel speaker and radio set up, with various low-fi electronics, cottage-built instruments, and mutually intertwined feedback systems. As analogue as possible.

Sunday 9. February 2014, 12:00-16:00, Konrad and I will give a workshop, whose title is inspired by the ever-erudite Gregory Whitehead:  An Intricate Game of Position: Critical artistic and phenomenological approaches to sound and radio.  This workshop discusses key paradigms such spatiality and resonance, active listening, transception, and transmission ecology, and includes a listening session and demonstration of basic transmission principles using micro-radio. Participants will also undertake guided activities and improvisational exercises such as soundwalking, and work together to create ‘instant’ performative radio pieces.  Taking place at the YNKB and Astrid Noack’s Atelier here in ydre Nørrebro, Copenhagen.

Earlier in the week, I curated this month’s episode of Københavns Radiobiograf at the Gloria Bio on Tuesday 4. February (where an audience gathers to listen to radio pieces in a darkened cinema). In addition to some old and new pieces of my own (Respire, Pirate Jenny, and Radiotelegraph) I had the pleasure of sharing some of my favourite pieces by others, like Miranda July‘s WSNO, About Time by Yves Daoust, and an excerpt from a.j. cornell‘s Private Telephone 1981. Check them out yourself, and wear some headphones while you listen!

Also gave a lecture on Thursday 6. February at the Hovedbibliothek or main library here in Copenhagen, on the topic of “The Unstable Art of Radio“, which was a brief introduction to creative uses and manipulations of radio and electro-magnetic waves, particularly looking at working with transmitters, manipulating receivers, and some aeriology. Really nice audience, and a great opportunity for me to dig up old crystal set schematics and evidence of DIY tinkering… even as proposed by Quaker Oats:

No Comments | In: news, performances, transmission | tags: anna friz, Astrid Noack's atelier, konrad korabiewski, Københavns Hovedbibliothek, Københavns Radiobiograf, making noise where ever we go, Mayhem, radio art, transmission art, YNKB. | #

Jeff Kolar and I will be performing new work together tonight for the hybrid radio project ∏-node at the 2014 CTM Festival. Tonight’s show is co-organized by Salon Bruit and senderberlin.org.

∏-node is an experimental platform for hybrid Web/FM radiophonic composition. As a multi-dimensional radio infrastructure platform, ∏-node explores the narrative, participative, and imaginary possibilities of radio through the use of both historic and new, digital technologies.

CTM Festival is an international festival dedicated to contemporary electronic, digital and experimental music, as well as the diverse range of artistic activities in the context of sound and club cultures here in Berlin. Since 1999 it takes place concurrently and cooperatively with transmediale – international festival for art and digital culture, Berlin.

Listen:
p-node radio stream

When:
January 29, 2014
12:00 AM – 2:00 AM GMT +1

Where:
Where is Jesus Temporary Space
Wrangelstrasse 57, 10997
Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany

No Comments | In: news, performances, transmission | tags: anna friz, CTM festival, jeff kolar, p-node.org, salon bruit. | #

Tonight is the opening of my new installation and performance entitled White Night, created within the frame of my City at Night theme during a 2-month residency with KC Tobačna 001 and radioCONA here in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

* Opening at 19:00 at KC Tobačna 001 gallery, Tobačna ulica 1, Ljubljana
* RadioCONA broadcast on 88.8FM begins at 19:16
* Performance in the gallery at 20:00-ish

Later on, Brane Zorman and I do a live set for 2 FM frequencies, using the radioCONA temporary frequency (88.8FM) and the airwaves of Radio Študent (89.3FM) here in Ljubljana. For those of you listening locally, make sure to have 2 radios on at home, one for each station, to hear the full effect!

Here’s a little description of White Night
Radiophonic installation and performance

Since the advent of artificial illumination, the nocturnal urban space is increasingly described by its lighting. The shape and contour of the built environment is outlined by streetlighting, highlighted by mobile car and transport lights, and by lights left blazing in the windows of office towers and store fronts, or recreating daylight over subdivisions, parking lots and sports fields. The stars recede and the sky grows blank from the strength of light pollution, a process accentuated by the typical fog in Ljubljana in winter: no sun, no stars, only diffuse light in a white sky drawn close to the ground.

The ubiquitous infrastructure of the electrical grid powers most nocturnal activity, and its surplus is ticks, static, and hums transmitted by many nodes: buildings, devices, lights, and lines; by damp electrical wires, power stations, connection boxes, irate refrigerators, and ungrounded home entertainment systems alike. Electrical and spectral communication grids overlap and exceed the official city limits, and in these electro-magnetic fields invisible creatures sing on a pale night made indistinct by fog.

Created while in residence at Tobačna 001 and with radioCONA; travel funding gratefully received from the Canada Council for the Arts, Media Art division.
Thank you to Irena Pivka and Vlado G. Repnik.

No Comments | In: installation, news, performances, transmission | tags: anna friz, City at Night, radio art, radio installation, radioCONA, Tobacna 001, transmission art, White Night. | #

Anna Friz + Eric Leonardson @ MEGAPOLIS Audio Festival from MEGAPOLIS Festival on Vimeo.

Eric Leonardson and I played a concert at Union Docs, Brooklyn, in April 2013, in advance of the Megapolis Festival in NYC. The festival folk have just cut together some footage with our talkback session after the concert, check it out! Eric played the Springboard, his self-constructed instrument, and I played various electronics and free reed instruments. The sound system included a two-channel radio array of about 100 radios suspended around the space.

No Comments | In: news, performances | tags: anna friz, eric leonardson, Megapolis 2013. | #

Yup, it’s time to sally forth for our fifth and final episode of NRRF B Radio this summer, kindly hosted by the Experimental Sound Studio here in Chicago, with streaming support and rebroadcast from our favourite station WGXC and Wave Farm (free103point9) Transmission Arts in Green and Columbia counties, New York state.

This week, NRRF goes underground and returns with BROOD II: Emergence. Year 17 has arrived, and genus Magicicada are crawling out of the ground and playing the largest noise show of all time. But there may be more than one kind of insect emerging from its pupa…. All things insectoid, especially those that come in clouds and swarms.

TUNE IN! WEDNESDAY JULY 31, 18h-21h CDST (GMT -6).

If you find yourself on Chicago’s north side, tune in to 87.9FM, or better yet, drop in and say hi at ESS,         5925 N Ravenswood, where the live radio is happening.

or listen online at http://free103point9.org.
free103point9/ WGXC in Greene/Columbia counties NY will rebroadcast the show following the live show at 11CDT.

B Radio: a series of radio shows mashing b-list genres with radio art. Each B Radio episode features a theme to structure the improvisational nature of the shows, though tangents are frequent and encouraged. It’s live radio, streamed, with special guests and live audience. The core group of performers play live instruments and electronics, sample wildly, speculate broadly, and have been known to sing.

NRRF is a collaborative effort to make unlicensed neighborhood radio art. For this Chicago iteration, the core group of noisemakers consists of Jonny Farrow, Anna Friz, Steve Germana, Jeff Kolar, Peter Speer, with Sarah Knudtson (documentation and props wrangling). Earlier projects include street radio in Montreal (2001), the NRRF Radio Roadshow (2004), and Radio Free Parkdale in Toronto (2005-2007).

No Comments | In: news, performances, transmission | tags: anna friz, B Radio, Brood II, ESS Chicago, jeff kolar, jonny farrow, NRRF, peter speer, stephen germana. | #

If you are in Chicago, come on down, up, or over to Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) where you will encounter at least five very soggy pirates having a picnic in the Bermuda Triangle. There will be costumes, custom cocktails, and very large knives! Sea shanties! Sentient squid! The innocent Devil’s Triangle! It’s B Radio, episode 4: Pirate Picnic in the Bermuda Triangle!

Here’s how to tune in:

1. If you are within a several block radius of ESS, tune in to 87.9FM starting at 6pm CDT ending at 9pm.

2. Come to think of it, if you are within a several block radius of ESS, just come over and “watch” radio being made.

3. Use the innernets to listen — here’s a link with instructions. Seems slightly complicated, but if you can cut and paste, you can get to radio space. http://transmissionarts.org/event/b8hyq4

More about NRRF B Radio:

B Radio: a series of radio shows mashing b-list genres with radio art. Each B Radio episode features a theme to structure the improvisational nature of the shows, though tangents are frequent and encouraged. It’s live radio, streamed, with special guests and live audience. The core group of performers play live instruments and electronics, sample wildly, speculate broadly, and have been known to sing. NRRF is a collaborative effort to make unlicensed neighborhood radio art. For this Chicago iteration, the core group of noisemakers consists of Jonny Farrow, Anna Friz, Steve Germana, Jeff Kolar, Peter Speer, with Sarah Knudtson (documentation and props wrangling). Earlier projects include street radio in Montreal (2001), the NRRF Radio Roadshow (2004), and Radio Free Parkdale in Toronto (2005-2007).

More about Episode 4: “Pirate Picnic in the Bermuda Triangle”:

Five jolly NRRF pirates set out to sea in their sloop to ride the radio waves. They quickly encounter a massive storm which diverts them into the Bermuda Triangle, where the ship is scuttled and underwater adventures abound, complete with creatures massive and minute, friendly and menacing. Finally they wash up on a remote island, and have to fend for themselves. This radio event might even include a cooking demonstration. Vegan option available.

“It’s just the innocent devil’s triangle / It dares you to come down, that’s it’s angle / That’s the way of Bermuda.” -Roky Erickson

“If you can’t cook your friends, then who can you cook?” – Captain Cooke

No Comments | In: news, performances, transmission | tags: anna friz, experimental sound studio, jeff kolar, jonny farrow, NRRF Radio, peter speer, stephen germana. | #

NRRF presents: B Radio

Episode 3: Landfall on the Forbidden Planet

After a harrowing encounter with the Nebulaic Alliance, at which point they may or may not have been cloned, our intrepid NRRF cosmonauts leave the solar system to land upon a mysterious distant planet, enshrouded in fog and murk. Adventures on the Forbidden Planet and the Mandatory Planet ensue, with the possible cloning of the entire human species at stake!

Wednesday June 19, 2013  18h-21h.

LIVE radio at the studios of the Experimental Sound Studio, 5925 N Ravenswood, Chicago

Online (link TBA), and on air in the neighbourhood.

Streaming generously provided by free103point9 Transmission Arts, and the show will be rebroadcast on WGXC 90.7FM NY June 20, midnight-3am.

B Radio: a series of radio shows mashing b-list genres with radio art. Each B Radio episode features a theme to structure the improvisational nature of the shows, though tangents are frequent and encouraged. It’s live radio, broadcast and streamed, with special guests and live audience. The core group of performers play live instruments and electronics, sample wildly, speculate broadly, and have been known to sing.

NRRF is a collaborative effort to make unlicensed neighbourhood radio art.

For this Chicago iteration, the core group of noisemakers consists of Jonny Farrow, Anna Friz, Steve Germana, Jeff Kolar, Peter Speer, with Sarah Knudtson (graphics, documentation and props wrangling).

Earlier projects include street radio in Montreal (2001), the NRRF Radio Roadshow (2004), and Radio Free Parkdale in Toronto (2005-2007).

NRRF flag by Jonny Farrow.

No Comments | In: news, performances, transmission | tags: anna friz, B Radio, ESS, experimental sound studio, Forbidden Planet, jeff kolar, jonny farrow, NRRF, peter speer, Pirate radio art, radio art, stephen germana. | #