Category Archives: #2

Show 019: Virtual Nature by Bill Fontana

In May 1990, ORF KUNSTRADIO, the radio-art program on the National Austrian Radio, and the WIENER FESTWOCHEN (the annual international festival of Vienna), collaborated to assist in the realisation of “LANDSCAPE SOUNDINGS / KLANGLANDSCHAFTEN”, a live sound and radio sculpture by Bill Fontana. For two weeks, 16 microphones that had been most carefully positioned by the artist captured the sound events taking place in the Stopfenreuther Au, a part of the Danube marshes near Hainburg on the Slovakian border.

By means of a collage of various transmission technologies these sound-events were delivered live to an improvised studio at the Museum of Art History and distributed to 70 speakers, again carefully placed and arranged, along the facades and in the cupolas of both the Museum of Art History and the Museum of Natural History and in the formal garden between them with its monument to the empress Maria Theresia. A stereo mix of the live signals was transmitted simultaneously and continuously to the ORF Funkhaus in Vienna where the producers were free to use the sounds at all times. Within a few days and with increasing frequency the live sounds could be heard on all of the radio channels of the Austrian National Radio. The success was so overwhelming that following a suggestion by Ernst Grissemann, the radio broadcasting director at the time, the last five minutes of the sculpture were eventually broadcast live on all ORF radio channels simultaneously: for 5 minutes the space of Austrian radio (at the time a monopoly) became the site of a live sound sculpture blotting out any other radio content.

During the 14 days of its realization LANDSCAPE SOUNDINGS developed into a project which paradigmatically touches upon some of the most important aspects of telematic/radio art: the phenomenon of simultaneity as well as the dissolution of the traditional concept of the (‘finished’) work of art; the co-authorship between artists and non-artists as well as the new definition of the role of the artist who, when preparing his work within the public, i.e. institutionalized domain, becomes an initiator, (project) manager, facilitator responsible for motivating other people involved to find, if necessary, highly unorthodox solutions.

LANDSCAPE SOUNDINGS not only highlighted the poetics of a fragile and endangered natural environment by and through the live transmissions but, by eavesdropping on nature, also adressed the surveillance character of new recording and transmission technologies which are infiltrating every aspect of the social space.

Two CDs were produced by Bill Fontana in connection with the project; LANDSCAPE SOUNDINGS, 1990 and VIRTUAL NATURE, 1994.

heidi grundmann

Bill Fontana – Landscape Soundings

Show 018: random, voices, choir, questions

consists of 3 pieces from 3 different artists:

„Feif Minuten“
Caroline Hofer (text, voice), Jens Döring (music, production), Max Czerwenka (voice, recording) – additional voice contributions by Resonance FM and riist
Feif Minuten is a random play. Made of: music, ambience and speech – mixed into a piece of 11.294 seconds – in any combination, as often as you want. This way mini-radioplays emerge which can be used as inspiring appetizers or in-betweens. The sentences are taken from every-day life, fantasy, the present, the past and the future.

„Von AHA bis WELL“
Lale Rodgarkia-Dara
Each language has its own filler words and filler sounds which give time for thoughts to develop and build bridges from one sentence to the next. The piece creates an international conversation exclusively made of these words and sounds. Interviews with people speaking different languages are used as audio footage.

“Will it become a choir? – An acoustic world-tour across Vienna”
Ilse Chlan
“Will it become a choir?” takes the polylingual atmosphere of Vienna which is constituted by the coexistence of the different languages as a starting point. Migrants speak about their life and their experiences in Vienna. They came to Vienna for all different kinds of reasons: as refugees, students, artists, looking for work. They speak in many different languages. Will their voices become a choir?

Show 013: Exotic Jam – are you hungary?

What happens when you get a bunch of people living in Hungary in a studio? Well sit down and LISTEN, there are further questions.

What may come from a country as representation of local art? Yes, you’ve got special local art, more specifically local then universal, and knowing certain patterns typical of a region instantly helps you recognise where it is from. And you’ve got local versions of international trends. Our RADIA network itself provides a great variety of answers to these questions, just browse through the types of shows, their origins and their themes, languages.

Minor languages, smaller language-communities – once taken out of their isolation – have always needed to interpret what is going around them in different languages, and naturally, the outside communication is almost for sure in a major language. And then you have foreigners who feel like crossing the – already disappearing – national boundaries, and settle down in a small country, bringing a fresh experience and a new outlook on a city.

What is a nation at the turn of the 21st century, and what is it that a small nation officially communicates about herself – as a newly joined EU country – these still don’t necessarily cover each other properly.

At the time of communism, black people – due to the great solidarity for people oppressed by the West ha ha – could come to study in Eastern Europe typically at universities such as Medical and Technical, some stayed here, and had families, some went back, but there is a growing number of young black people, and typical community groups and locales appearing – as everywhere minority groups are in the formation.

Gimmeshot hip hop crew was officially formed in 2000, gathering MC’s and bringing up DJ’s around DJ Mango – aka producer Modul – who’s been backing up local and international MC’s and poets with beats and records for more than a decade. Another portion of the crew’s momentum is gathered from Afro-Hungarian MC queen Sena (recent cooperations with DJ Vadim (UK), DJ Spider (F)), and MC Kemon, the Caribbean football bass-wordbouncer (recently featured on Cay Taylan’s EP), not to forget about big beatboxer Busa, a favourite of local jazz and folk musicians. Resonance listeners could already have a taste of them at last year’s Radio Art Riot as the band backing Canadian spoken word artist Dwayne Morgan, as members are active in different formations from several musical instruments to bigger eclectic setups. And if an international artist comes to visit Budapest – as you can see it from the cooperation list – they seem to be ready to take the challenge, so this is the time to listen to the local source.

This special show is introduced and closed by a live project of Busa with folk musicians, called Zuboly, featuring Hungarian “unplugged folk bootlegs”. The studio jam is produced by Mango and Polski, and the heart of the studio, Elm, together with the three above mentioned vocal beat gals and bwoys.

They are no kings and queens really, just a happy street family.

Take a trip with them.