anna friz

Usually when more than one sound installation moves into a gallery space, it’s an instant competition where the loudest wins the day. This Saturday, myself and Coppice (Joseph Kramer and Noé Cuéllar) seek to prove otherwise. We are installing two different sound-based installations that intentionally overlap, interested to see what they produce in conversation with one another. We’ll be performing within/with them as well, each taking a turn to add to the sonic environment.

I was excited from the first time I heard of Chicago-based Coppice, as they are also focused on free reeds and electronics, unstable systems, and spatialized, often quiet sounds.  Here’s what we’re up to:

Anna Friz/ Coppice   Saturday May 25, 2013     TriTriangle   Third Floor, 1550 N. Milwaukee Ave  Chicago    Installation open 6-11pm.  Performance around 9pm.

Anna Friz: Nocturne

An intimate atmosphere of transmission inside a multi-channel array of radio receivers and micro-watt transmitters, suspended and dispersed throughout the space. The radios express nighttime respirations, radio-synthesis, and uneasy dreams. The larger array is joined by three table-top custom radio/tape players built by Hyde Park inventor George Kagan.

Nocturne will overlap in installation and performance with A Vinculum Variation by Coppice, engaging in conversation with the elements of the shared sonic landscape and the live instruments of all three performers. Anna plays free reeds, electronics, and cassettes.

Coppice: A Vinculum Variation

This presentation expands the performed-installation practice of the duo to invite conversation with adjacent sonic work.  The multichannel installation and performance accommodates motifs and materials from Vinculum, an ongoing project since 2010.  Technically, the work relies on a custom-built inductive mixing table, formerly utilized in Copse (2010).  The table redistributes the sounds of the Vinculum archive as they are played back through small speakers resting at different locations on its surface.  The installation will be elaborated in performance by the reorientation of the speakers on the table and live material related to Vinculum.

No Comments | In: installation, news, performances | tags: anna friz, Coppice, radio art, sound installation, TriTriangle. | #

Saturday night, as part of my tenure as SOCAN composer in residence at Deep Wireless Festival of Radio and Transmission Art here in Toronto during the month of May, I’ll be doing a live solo show:

May 4, 2013, 8pm

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

Toronto-based audio artist D. Burke Mahoney is also on the bill that night.

What the cuckoo knows/collecting clocks and losing time (2013)

In a country with deep forests and high mountains cuckoo clocks make their home, nesting in trees in flocks. Once upon a time, a cuckoo clock flew away on a long and perilous journey across many zones of soft time, until one day it encountered the factory where errant robotniks manufacture atomic time.

This solo performance utilizes recordings from my late father’s collection of antique clocks, with live instrumentation of mbira, sruti box, harmonica, Tetrax, electronics, and shortwave. Originally conceived in the studios of Ö1 ORF Kunstradio, Austria. Thanks to Martin Leitner and Elisabeth Zimmermann. The radio piece will air in 5.1 in summer 2013 on ORF Kunstradio.

Sunday May 19 I’ll be back in Toronto for the Trans-X Symposium to give a keynote talk at 10:00 in the morning (hello early birds!) and perform with Kristen Roos in the evening, a live piece under the rubric of Short Horizon. We’ll have a microwave oven, some FM radios, walkie talkies, and an HF “diviner”. Catch it at 20:00, the Artscape Wychwood Barns, Theatre Direct Space, same address as above.

No Comments | In: news, performances | tags: anna friz, d burke mahoney, deep wireless festival of radio and transmission art, kristen roos, NAISA, trans-x symposium, what the cuckoo knows. | #

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.

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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.

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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. | #

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. | #

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. | #