anna friz

photo by Omer Yukeseker

I’m doing some transmission and tech work for a wonderful show by Toronto dancer extraordinaire Susie Burpee— A Mass Becomes You. 

It’s a solo piece, inspired by Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #122 (1983), featuring Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor and a host of boomboxes.  Susie is an amazing performer with such intensity and a laughing-to-keep-from-crying Beckett-like sensibility that really drives this absurd and beautiful work. 

My job involves some composing, a lot of boombox wrangling, and keeping all the little radios working as they should. Designing Mozart-meets-radioworld has caused some weird musical organisms to occupy my inner ear– like a choral reef, you might say. 

For those of you in Southern Ontario, the show happens at the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival at the River Run Centre in Guelph on Friday June 4 at 8PM, and at the Canada Dance Festival at the  National Arts Centre in Ottawa on June 9 at 4PM.

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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). 

No Comments | In: news, performances | tags: anna friz, Deep Wireless 2010, EC Woodley, mercer union, radio art, sound performance, transmission art. | #

Hugo Verweij over at the always-interesting sound blog Everyday Listening has an ongoing series where he poses five questions to various sonic-obsessed folk, and this week he’s featuring my rambling answers to his questions…. Walk on over and have a look.

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Spring means a new issue of Musicworks magazine “for curious ears”, and this issue is all about “The Future of Radio”. Local filmmaker and writer Chris Kennedy wrote a lovely feature article on my recent radiophonic installations, and the issue showcases other interesting radio/sound artists like my occasional collaborator Kristen Roos. There’s a CD accompanying the magazine, which includes an stereo remix of an excerpt of the composition from my multi-channel radio installation Respire.

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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.

No Comments | In: news | tags: anna friz, eric leonardson, hibernation, research, short horizon, snow all over the damn place, transmission art. | #

Domestic Wireless, Dust. was showing as part of the Leona Drive Project here in Willowdale (metro Toronto) which just closed on   October 31. My piece was installed in the upper bedroom at Leona 9…. 

…you’ll have to imagine the little drones and susurrations of radios, as they transmit the signals of wireless life past and present that pass through the house.

The Leona Drive project is  a site-specific exhibition in a series of six vacant bungalows slated for demolition by Hyatt Homes, a developer in Willowdale, Ontario (in the Yonge and Finch area of Greater Toronto). The exhibition artists will be working in a variety of media: audio, radiophonic interceptions, architectural installation, projection, photography, sculpture and performance for a period of two weeks, from October 22nd – 31st 2009. The overall problematic for the exhibition is the remarkable shift from the suburbs of old to the suburbs of contemporary Canada, namely the neighborhoods and precincts of the multicultural, but nonetheless parsed state.Through the Leona Drive project, we are investigating recent developments in suburbia where new patterns of community and conscience operate. 

We sadly packed up the little Leona houses behind yesterday, boarding them back up after an amazing run. The turn-out for the duration of the show was really enthusiastic, and my favourite part was being the greeter/information person in the entrance hallway of Leona 9, hearing people’s stories of living in similar houses and their impressions of the works. 

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October 25, 2009, at the Hysteria Festival of Women at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, I’ll be performing as part of Evalyn Parry‘s fantastic new bicycle piece– she has written a new suite of songs, stories, and spoken word about bicycling today and in the roaring 1890’s. Brad Hart plays the bicycle, and I play the pedals and lights, as well as some other free reed instruments like accordion, harmonica, and melodica. If you’re in Toronto, it’s one night only (at least for this time around), but look out for more dates to come. 

No Comments | In: news, performances | tags: anna friz, bicycles, evalyn parry, hysteria festival, sound design, sound performance. | #

Well, the all-night frenzy of Nuit Blanche is over for another year, and my radio installation Respire had a steady line-up of visitors through the night. Toronto area artist and photographer Tom Blanchard took some marvelous photographs of the piece:

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Yes indeed, Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s all-night art event is fast approaching, and I’m busy preparing to hang the big radio array in Zone B (in the lobby at 100 Yonge Street to be precise). Trevor Schwellnus is designing my rigging plan, and we’ll all be up and down ladders for a few nights later this week. 

But here, just to prove that art can still be a lot like working in factory… Trevor and I spent two days tying radios onto cable so we can get it all in the sky and then let down each radio on it’s little thread. Phew.

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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:

No Comments | In: news | tags: anna friz, artscape, gibraltar point, radio art, toronto island, transmission art. | #