anna friz

NRRF Radio returns, this time taking on the audio cultures of patriotism, specifically national and state anthems.

Radio and television stations around the world regularly play their national anthem, either at the end of the broadcast day or at a designated hour. In the US the practice was amplified under the COVID-19 pandemic on conservative networks. The imagined sound of everyone singing an anthem signals an equally imaginary unity around national identity. But this pantomime rehearsal of a uniform national ‘we’ continually erases difference while the band plays on, singing of warped colonial American dreams to the tune of an inevitably mediocre melody in doggerel rhyme. In Irrational Anthem NRRF takes up various anthems of the Americas as a radiophonic method; to deconstruct and interrupt regularly scheduled patriotism; to add to this messy contemporary soundtrack; to form a noisy hymn of resistance and reflection for new collectivities that include difference, dissensus, rebellion and renewal. 

Invited by Tsonami Festival de Arte Sonoro, NRRF will be performing in Valparaíso, Chile on December 12, 2021, at 20h (UTC -3). Jeff Kolar will be live on site, with Jonny Farrow, Anna Friz, Stephen Germana and Peter Speer performing remotely from Abu Dhabi, California, Florida and North Carolina.

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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

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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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The art and mayhem continues, even with a sugar hangover…. For those of you in the Greene and Columbia counties of New York state, WGXC is rebroadcasting our full NRRF Art’s Birthday radio shenanigans tonight (Saturday, January 19) from 22h to 4h overnight (that’s GMT -5).

ORF Kunstradio is also remixing audio from many different international nodes on January 20 and Feb 17, including some NRRF nuggets.

Flaming cake by Jonny Farrow. Piñata supplied and modified by Jeff Kolar.

Thanks to free103point9 for streaming help on January 17!

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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. | #