anna friz

Back in October 2013, while on residency at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art in Seydisfjördur, Iceland, I crafted a 16:00 minute radio beacon to broadcast on my private transmitter every evening at sundown for a week. Radiotelegraph featured my first formal attempts at performing vocal morse code, laid over a bed of signals and oscillations. It was simulcast on the mighty Radius in Chicago, U.S. as episode 44 in their esteemed catalogue of transmission experiments.

In the last month, Radiotelegraph has made its way around the world in various ways:

-featured on Radius’ Sketchpad series on WGXC New York and the Wavefarm’s Transmission Arts archive, May 23, 2014

-featured in the latest curated playlist of Radius’ PATCH series on WFMU New Jersey and the Free Music Archive (FMA), posted June 1, 2014. This series includes three Radius episodes that reflect on the concept of distance.

-featured as part of radio trickster Gregory Whitehead‘s edition of Radio Yak, heard on the brand new Soundproof program, Radio National of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, aired May 25, 2014.

And finally… tomorrow I’m on my way to give a paper at the Radio As Art conference at the Weserburg Museum Studienzentrum in Bremen, Germany, taking place from 5-8. June 2014. I’ll be talking about “The Wireless Experience of Distance”. The whole conference will be streamed by Mobile Radio here, including some really nice curated overnight programming from the Radia network and ORF Kunstradio.

No Comments | In: conferences, news, transmission | tags: anna friz, FMA, Gregory Whitehead, radio art, Radio As Art, Radius, shameless self-promotion, Soundproof, transmission art, Wavefarm, WGXC. | #

Some news from the Uhrwald, where cuckoos nest at night: I’m very pleased and honoured to have been awarded second place in the Prix Palma Ars Acoustica 2014 for Collecting Clocks and Losing Time (2013), a feature-length radio art composition created in 5.1 surround sound for ORF Kunstradio, on the Austrian national public radio.

Collecting Clocks and Losing Time is part of a body work I’ve been developing over the past four years of iterative experiments with radio and timekeeping, and includes Studio Time (2013), 5 Times (less a hundred) (2012), Measure the time taken (2011), For the time being (2010), and the ongoing project Zero Hour. This piece has some special emotional resonance for me, as it was composed around recordings of my late father’s cuckoo clocks, one of which was broken in such a way as to eternally cuckoo until the escapement runs out. In addition to the individual eccentricities of these clocks, the work features manipulations of the atomic clock, or coordinated universal time as broadcast globally on shortwave frequencies. It would be fair to say I’ve been obsessed with broadcast time since the mid-1990s, and since making Collecting Clocks and Losing Time, I have continued my focused manipulations of clocks in longer form works for overnight broadcast, particularly the 5-hour work Uncoordinated Universal Time (2014).

No Comments | In: news, transmission | tags: anna friz, Atomic Clock, atomic time, Collecting Clocks and Losing Time, cuckoo clocks, ORF Kunstradio, Prix Palma Ars Acustica. | #

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. | #

Oh Berlin, I love your flea markets. This little night light is going to be in a new piece this spring…. I just bought her sister on the interweb…

No Comments | In: news, transmission | tags: anna friz, future radio art, telefunken, the future as imagined by the past. | #

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. | #

Currently getting around the independent radio networks of Europe and beyond: extensive broadcasting in Ljubljana, Slovenia with radioCONA and Radio Študent in January, then some spontaneous radio making with p-node at Club Transmediale, Berlin (featuring some lovely collaborations with Jeff Kolar of Radius, Ann Rosen and Sten-Olof Hellström of Schhh, and as Ghost Imbiss with Jeff Kolar and Emilie Mouchous). Special Radius playlists including my episode 44 Radiotelegraph graced the p-node last week, and will be broadcast overnight on February 7, 2014, on the Endless Tape program of EPSILONIA Radio Libertaire, 89.4FM in Paris, France.

No Comments | In: news, transmission | tags: anna friz, Ghost Imbiss, Radiotelegraph, Radius. | #

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. | #

This week (27.01.2014 – 02.02.2014) our second NRRF B Radio episode Voyage to the Forbidden Planet rebroadcasts on the international independent radio network Radia, devoted to new and forgotten ways of making radio.

Radia is a network of 25 independent, non-commercial stations operating in Europe and beyond:

Campus Paris (Paris, FR) CFRC 101.9 FM (Kingston, CA) CKUT (Montréal, CA) Curious Broadcast (Dublin, IR) JET FM (Nantes, FR) Kanal 103 (Skopje, MK) Orange 94.0 (Vienna, AT) Radio Campus (Brussels, BE) Radio Corax (Halle, DE) Radio Grenouille (Marseille, FR) Radio Helsinki (Graz, AT) Radio Nova (Oslo, NO) Radio One 91 FM (Dunedin, NZ) Radio Panik (Brussels, BE) Radio Papesse (Firenze, IT) Radio Student (Ljubljana, SI) radio x (Frankfurt/Main, DE) Rádio Zero (Lisboa, PT) RadioWORM (Rotterdam, NL) Reboot.fm (Berlin, DE) Resonance104.4fm (London, UK) Soundart Radio (Dartington, UK) TEA FM (Zaragoza, ES) Wave Farm WGXC 90.7-FM (New York, USA) XL Air (Brussels, BE).

No Comments | In: news, transmission | tags: B Radio, NRRF, Radia network. | #

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. | #