Tag Archives: Radio Student

Show 715: From side A to side B of the Climate by Staš Vrenko (Radio Student)

From side A to side B of the Climate

Two presented compositions are taken from an album Klima (Climate) by Staš Vrenko released in March 2018 under a Slovenian label for improvised and experimental music “Zvočni prepihi”. Author holds a degree in sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana but in his interdisciplinary practise he is intensively dealing with field recording and its performative aspects, as well as the technological and media specifications of the sound itself.

Presented composition from side A – Osončeno (Sun-drenched) is the longest one out of three pieces that in Vrenko’s words…

“…summarize the past two years of the creative work and research. The condensation of fragments and recordings is tracing the boundaries of field recording, plunderphonics, engaging in and creating electronic instruments and sound design. The complementing and intervening of recordings opens up the possibility for diverse audio material, of simultaneously being documentary and musical, even if it is usually not perceived as such. The principles of re-amping and recording, add their own acoustics to the material, such as sounds of various surfaces recorded with contact microphones, vinyl record manipulation, DIY modular synthesizer and others that usually don’t have it. Field recordings are thus placed in the same order. They, as real acoustic spaces, become subject to certain strategies of sound design and other media manipulations. Such ‘equalization’, which deals with all the recordings from a standpoint of the final reduction to the vibrations of the speaker membrane, complicates the relationship between contingency, that is usually ascribed to found sound and field recordings, and desire and composition, which are usually associated with the creation of electronic and composed music.” *

The 18 minutes long side B’s last composition Tehnike posvojitve (Adoption Techniques) juxtapose with the wider art project that holds the same name and was presented in Gallery P74, Ljubljana, Slovenija as a sound installation in September 2017.

“In the Adoption Techniques, documents of highly processual and site-specific research and creation, are regarded as the explications of the acts of sound recording and playback.  They, as specific forms of performativity, enable the re-thinking of the position of the sound creator and the musician. The selection from a vast heterogeneous mass includes, among other things, examples of different occurrences of mediated sound, replay and consequent changes in the source locations and the time of the sound. The sounds are tied by the last stage – the final “recording” and the flattening of each fragment into a self-standing representation.  Emphasis is placed on the recordist – the listener who in the process of gathering recordings, recognizes events in the sound environment as signs. This necessitates the determination of the sound’s sources and echoes as well as the differentiation, arrangement and separation of sounds and their relations to meaningful and meaningless. Exactly tracing this unsustainable line, thinking about the acousmatics, transparency of the media, and the non-selectivity of the recording process of a recorder, which creates a complete (meaningful) whole from an inconceivable time-and-sound stream, brings on the reflection on what and how the audio documents can be ‘read’ by the listener. Repeated capturing, playback, re-recording and dubbing, results in an unfaithful tracing of the sound sources and in thinking about what the potential of a recording act, that for its audibility demands and creates a new, future playback site, is. The pursuit of these simultaneities, due to the temporal nature of the sound, intensely places itself on the point before and after sound, in the place of constant anticipation and distance from the moment of capture.” *

* text by Staš Vrenko

photo by Maja Burja

Show 687: Excerpt from Ptičji Mozak by SsmKOSK (Radio Student)

Excerpt from Ptičji Mozak

The presented material is an auditory stream of 4 compositions – a segment of the recent sound work by the audiovisual artist, poet and linguist Blaž Božič, released under alias SsmKOSK in the form of an album by Zvočni Prepihi record label in 2018.

Inter alia, it serves to exemplify his creative methods dealing with semantic multiplicity of music genre fusion, topologically specific to post-transitional Eastern Europe soundscape, most noticeably – turbo-folk. During the process of critical observation of the latter and working in the field of contemporary electronic music and sound art, the artist developed conceptually intricate techniques of working with sound, which further accelerate genre fusion by juxtaposing various found samples and usage of classical and non-classical instruments alongside spoken word, circuit bent equipment (guitar pedals, portable CD and VHS players, drum machine, etc.) and DSP tools for medium reconfiguration.

photo by: Blaž Božič

Show 656: AMonFM::: underground_acceleration by beepblip (Radio Student)

beepblip

The track was recorded live on Sound Topographies Festival at Škuc Gallery, on 1 October 2017, by an invitation of the festival’s curator Nina Dragičević. The track is based on various field recordings, which in their raw form often sound quite piercing for the ear. Field recordings are most interesting for the person who finds them, in simultaneity with the sound-event, in direct contact with the sound-field source. Such encounters are marked by an element of surprise in a unique event, a non reproducible moment in time. With repetition this moment becomes an object in the archive of memory, of something known and transmittable. In my relation to sound, the element of the unexpected plays a significant role, as though I am making sounds in the tension between repetition and surprise.

The track plays with various frequencies in audio or electromagnetic spectrums, which are outside the range of a human hearing. Often, such frequencies come in extremely high and sharp form, when they are transposed to the human hearing range. These are exactly the frequencies that attract me most. I am producing such sound in an attempt to shift the flow of conscious thinking.  In this way, the production of such persistent sounds is political, because they nullify the capacity to be productive and efficient; the two imperatives imposed by capitalist mode of reproduction. At the same time, these sounds are not particularly entertaining, and they offer relaxation only to the people who refuse to be relaxed in an anesthetic way. The track ideally works as a jammer for thought pollution.

A few words about field recording. In the immediacy of listening when recording, I am using amplifiers, catchers of frequencies, different antennas, coils, transducers. I record either outside of the hearing range, either in the electromagnetic fields or on the radio frequencies outside of the advertisement-polluted FM (AM or VHF). To walk through space with headphones and an amplifier of sort is like floating in some virtual inter-space, which is not connected to online or digital virtuality, but a virtual space on the level of electromagnetic waves, for example. In my utopian thinking, I imagine that computers and the web are not optimal carriers of virtuality. If we are ever to develop interfaces, which are more comfortable for our human bodies, we would have to invent new way of virtualisation. I am not interested only in producing sound compositions, but propose sounds, which would say something about the future. As a representative of contemporary cognitariat I feel flattened in two dimensions of a computer screen. And sometimes I am in awe with the 3D world with its forms and possibilities. An ordinary view of the world is virtual reality to me. My listening of electromagnetic waves is a way of opening the virtual space into more spatial and temporal dimensions.

The track consists of modified fragments recorded with a radio receiver on AM waves. Mostly they are without narration, and sometimes a word or a melody creeps in. I listen to these tracks like they would be arias of some sort. The tracks also consists of sound layers recorded with a coil for sound detection of electromagnetic waves. These recordings were mostly taken in 2013 and 2014 in New York City, where the EM waves are omnipresent. This part of the recordings is also the reason to call this track Underground Acceleration. What interests me in this sound layer is the tension of constant acceleration with few releases. This constant electromagnetic tension works like an illustration of capitalist depletion and accelerationism.

There is also a really beautiful example or an acoustic citation of light installation by Kurt Laurenz Theinert: Gespinst, exhibited a few years ago at the Lighting Guerrilla Festival in Ljubljana. In addition to these field recordings, there are also several sound levels produced live with analogue electronic synthesisers.

For the conclusion, perhaps a short explanation of the title AMonFM. Not only are some AM transmissions now channeled on radia-FM, the FM in this case is also the Shape of a dozen of analogue patches.

Show 628: It’s in my Nature by Brane Zorman (Radio Študent)

From the artists statement and description:
As certain spaces and times have become oversaturated due to urbanisation and the population explosion, certain (animal) species have began withdrawing to unpopulated landscapes and unoccupied times – into the night. We understand these withdrawals as a search for solutions that could lead to a ‘better quality of life’, an existence that would be better than the one offered to us by the oversaturated space-time.

Zorman created a 55min long wolf howling composition using from various sources and recordings techniques that was commissioned and premiered during radioCona:wolFMoon project in january 2017 (http://www.radiocona.si/radioconawolfmoon/).
This shorter edited version dives a listener to a cold winter night when wolfs howl to mark and protect their territory in and symphony of one of the most suggestive and powerful sound of nature which can be heard on remote parts of wolfs packs landscape.

Show 602: Otitis media 29 (excerpt): Con-(fi)-re 02 (Radio Student)

2014-11-03-om-29-con-fi-re-02-33469 (1)

Paul B. Preciado calls for the universal use of dildos in order to denaturalize sexuality, to infect it with a thing that is not a copy of a penis but an object that is both a way to appropriate the ass as the universal passive and non-reproductive organ that all people have and a way to multiply sexual acts, distributing them throughout the whole body. In this radio show, simply called “OM 29 – Co-Fi-Re (Conceptual Field Recording) 2”, I’ve tried to create an analogon to this notion of denaturalization, which this time comes in the shape of denaturalization of the machine of mechanic reproduction, the recording device Zoom H2N, which is no longer used only as a device to reproduce reality, but a device which directly addresses the feelings of a subject who holds it. Denaturalization comes hand in hand with the fact that on the secondary level the recording device is still doing what it was devised to do ñ it records ñ but its primary practice is interwoven with the subject, who is afraid of walking in the dark in the foreign country and in the fields xe has never walked before. Subject knows what can xe expect, but xe never experienced it before. The flow of affects is pouring in xem, but the only thing to reassure xem that xe will be all right, is the device, which was primarily meant to only reproduce reality. The recording device Zoom H2N stops reproducing reality and stops being a substitute machine for capturing reality and becomes something else. (Andrej Tomaûin)

http://radiostudent.si/kultura/otitis-media
http://www.radiostudent.si/

Show 576: Lala Raščić: Evil Earth’s Notebook (Radio Student)

mountain square Evil Earth’s Notebook is the spoken word segment of the project Evil Earth, realized by visual artist Lala Rascic during her residency in Ljubljana at the Cultural Center Tobacna and her collaboration with Radio Student.

In Evil Earth’s Notebook one hears Rascic read quotes, notes, loose associations, and custom-software generated text in the hypnotic-poetic  verbal performance exploring the notions of landscape, mountains, new optics, vertical imaging and remote perspective.

Evil Earth is a project dealing with the representation of landscape under contemporary conditions of visuality. As Marjorie Hope Nicholson outlines in Mountain Gloom, Mountain Glory, the shift in mountain attitudes in writings of the English poets of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries came about due to advances in science and technology, Evil Earth explores the cognitive shift happening today. The basic question asked is how does our perception and understanding of nature, earth and our environment change under the influence of contemporary consumer modes of visualization and screen technologies?

https://lalarascic.com/

Continue reading Show 576: Lala Raščić: Evil Earth’s Notebook (Radio Student)

Show 527: We Should Take Nothing for Granted! Listening Conditions for an Alert and Knowledgeable Citizenry (Radio Student)

RADIA SHOW 527 BY RADIO STUDENT, LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA:
 “We Should Take Nothing for Granted! Listening Conditions for an Alert and Knowledgeable Citizenry” 
by Matthew Biederman, Marko Peljhan, Brian Springer & Aljosa Abrahamsberg

Through the mining of the global radio spectrum for both recognizable voice communications as well as digital communications including encrypted, coded, open and proprietary modes, the work addresses current positions and debates  about the notions and structuring of  privacy, surveillance states, safety and active civic potentials to engage and re-imagine the relationship between the global citizenry and sovereign actors with the military industrial complexes including their visible, opaque and dark structures. 
The title is based on Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address of 1961 wherein he warns of the dangers of an unchecked military industrial complex, the extinction of creative free-thinking within higher education, and the extraction of natural resources without consideration for their renewal. The address is extremely relevant today in light of recent revelations of massive surveillance programs, perpetual information and real wars, the reshaping of the university complex and intensified resource extraction. Eisenhower’s speech was not a dark forecast but instead stated that  ‘only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals…’ The text serves as the foundation for a set of Systemic activities in the fields of communications security, data aggregation, analysis and display and retransmission. The work reflects on the conditions for the development of ‘an alert and knowledgeable citizenry’ in societal circumstances that, despite constitutional protections, do not warrant them.

Abrahamsberg, Biederman, Peljhan and Springer have been involved in activities dealing with the art and science of radio and telecommunications through the prism of radio art, technical culture, television, film, conceptual art, electronic music, media arts and tactical media since the 1980’s and 1990’s, in projects such as Ladomir-faktura, Makrolab, and Wardenclyffe. They are currently working on ‘Systemic tactical environments’ implementing the meshing of software defined radios, data aggregation, analysis and display.

Show 502: After Artefakt: IDIOT (Radio Student)

After Artefakt is a regular radio art show by Bojan Anđelković at Radio Student, Ljubljana. The show is exploring autonomous radio language in the reality of hybrid media, dealing with different media and languages, logic of sense of the words and sounds, repetition and difference. For the sound matrix this time we take experimental film of Niko Novak – IDIOT, on the eponymous novel by F.M. Dostoyevsky.

It happened in Switzerland. The first year of his therapy. At that time he was pretty much an idiot; he could not even speak properly. One sunny morning, he climbed up a mountain..

Bojan Anđelković is an artist, philosopher and media theorist, ex-chief editor of Radio Student, and coordinator of RADAR – Open Radio Investigative Platform of Radio Student.

VOICES: ENG: Niko Novak; SLO: Polona Torkar; SER: Bojan Anđelković; RUS: Fiškin’s mother

MUSIC: Ludwig van Beethoven, »Für Elise« / Niko Novak; The Machine, »Continental Drift« / Ciniša; Ben Frost, »Leo Needs A New Pair of Shoes« / Ciniša

Show 478: Theremidi Orchestra (Radio Student)

Theremidi is a made-up-word, a hybrid of thermin and midi controller.  Theremidi Orchestra (TO) is a verb, an ongoing workshop of noise and drone production. The hands-on electro noise ensemble exists in the present continuous, but refers also to the history of electronic music. TO has a DIY (do-it-yourself) and DIWO (do-it-with-others) approach in making music / sound experiments, making our own instruments (theremidi, micronoise, touch-tone…), based on open-source technologies. Currently, the Theremidi Orchestra consists of 9 active members, coming from different study or professional backgrounds. Every Monday TO meets at Ljudmila = Ljubljana Digital Media Lab to practice and develop soundscapes and build DIY sound devices. Theremidi Orchestra is a process of mutual understanding and solving problems in a horizontal manner. First it led us to abort the need for a central figure of sound technician or conductor. The process of production involves experimentation with sound outputs, mutually composed music scores, shared responsibilities for individual parts of the process, etc.

The featured track has been recorded by Radio Student. The first 6:40 minutes is a fragment of a live performance at TRESK #5 Festival with sound artist and dancer Irena Tomažin at Kino Šiška Cultural Centre. The rest of the track has been recorded live at Radio Student for DJ Seansa morning radio show.

Theremidi Orchestra active members are: Simon Bergoč, Tina Dolinšek, Luka Frelih, Ida Hiršenfelder, Dare Pejić, Tilen Sepič, Saša Spačal, Robertina Šebjanič, Dušan Zidar, Isac Petruzzi, Ian Soroka

More: http://wiki.ljudmila.org/Theremidi_Orchestra

Show 453: radioCona: Protests in Slovenia 2012-2013 by Radio Student

podcast produced for radioCona and CoLaboRadio, Berlin,

materials used:[i] various individual field recordings from various video YouTube sources

Slovenians Demand Radical Change

During the closing months of 2012, Slovenia has seen a series of mass popular protests. Thirty thousand demonstrators gathered on November 17 for the first protest, organised by trade unions, students, and organisations of retired people and artists. Dozens of protests followed, large
and small, taking place in virtually all of the urban settlements of Slovenia, often organized spontaneously through Facebook and other social media.

radioCona Temporary Project Radio For Contemporary Arts

Art project radioCona (by Irena Pivka, Brane Zorman) first broadcasted on january 1st, 2008. Till present nine FM and internet broadcasts with series of sound art, radio art, discursive projects, thematic discussions and lectures were produced. radioCona appeared and exhibited in Modern Gallery Ljubljana, City Gallery Ljubljana, transmediale.11, RAM LIVE, among others.