anna friz

This week, NRRF is back on the air, live in Chicago and Green and Columbia counties, New York, plus online all around the interweb.

NRRF Radio Collective Presents: We Interrupt This Broadcast

The world is burning: fires raging out of control; record heat and storms accumulating power and frequency; flooding ; disease vectors crossing the species barrier with ease. Apocalypse as usual. But we can listen to the radio: we interrupt our own broadcast to interrupt our own broadcast, and declare that “reception is interception”. And also to say that rubber bands last longer when refrigerated. Tune in won’t you?

7-10pm Thursday August 5, 2021 Central Daylight Time (GMT -6).

In Chicagoland, listen in live on the north side at 87.9FM; streamed live on Wave Farm Radio: NRRF Collective Presents; and in Green and Columbia counties, New York on WGXC 90.7FM from 8-10pm EDT.

NRRF is an ongoing series of radio art programs created and performed by the current NRRF collective composed of Jonny Farrow, Anna Friz, Stephen Germana, Jeff Kolar and Peter Speer. The group assembled in Chicago in 2012 at the Experimental Sound Studio for a summer residency making long-form, improvised radio art based on B-movie and sci-fi themes, deconstructing the genre for its tropes and stereotypes. The NRRF collective emphasizes abstract improvisation and takes as many tangents as possible. This results in an unpredictable mix of open sound fields, occasional narratives, spaceships that fail to launch, and even singing. 

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I’ll be joining the Experimental Sound Studio’s Quarantine Concert series line up on Wednesday April 1, 2020 (not a joke, a true event!). Tune in starting at 20:00 CDT (Chicago time, GMT -5, or PDT GMT -7 on the Pacific west coast). I’ll be on at 21:00, playing a 30 minute solo set.

The evening is curated by Sam Clapp, and features Erica Gressman, Norman Long, me, and Matt Test + Stephan Moore.

All donations from my set go to support ESS: support the survival of independent art and culture, especially now!

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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. | #

I’m hanging my multi-channel radio installation Respire at the Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) in Chicago this week, with the opening reception coming up on Friday July 15, 6PM-9PM. My good friend and partner in sonic crime Eric Leonardson will be joining me to play at the opening, where we’ll each improvise with the radio world of the installation. Respire will stay up until August 7, and will continue to change as I meddle with the transmitter configurations, composition, and interference potential. ESS has kindly let me use their Audible Gallery as a project space for the duration of the show, so I can continue my research into multi-channel radio systems. Gallery hours are Saturdays and Sundays from 1-5PM, or by appointment during the week. You can email me here as well and see when I’ll be in the gallery if you want to hang out and move antennas.

Here’s a short description of the piece:

Respire is an intimate experience of radio transmission, featuring a multi-channel array of suspended radio receivers and micro-watt transmitters. Sounds of breathing and other bodily exclamations typically absent from regular radio programming seep up through the welter of signals, as the receivers play and emit their own oscillating frequencies. This milieu of harmonic interference and uneasy nighttime respirations reveals the invisible contours of the radio landscape that surrounds us. Other sounds are created from instruments that echo human breath (harmonica) or the detuned radio landscape (theremin).

UPDATE:

The space is very intimate–a little sun-dappled box 6m x 6m. For the opening I blacked out the windows and lit the radios with small LED lights, but later on during the installation, I removed the blacks and lights to return the installation to “daytime mode”. New to the array this time around were the chirps and sounds of satellites, which were remarkably insectoid. Much like the similarity between human breath and static, the satellites-as-insects or frogs are striking for the way electro-magnetic and organic phenomena can sound so similar.

Eric Leonardson took a picture during the install: that’s me on a ladder, hanging radios once more…..

This work supported by a post-doctoral fellowship from Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture Québec.

No Comments | In: installation, news | tags: anna friz, eric leonardson, ESS, shameless self-promotion, sound installation, sound performance. | #