radio

Sound Spheres combines computational digital media and storytelling techne to provide an interface with which users can create and experience interactive aural narratives. Sound Spheres was conceptualized and created to encourage active engagement with sound sources (the colored spheres) representing narrative elements. Participants may engage these sound spheres to construct aural narratives using multiple interactive techniques. As participants do not know the contents of sound spheres, narratives constructed using this technique are serendipitous, similar to actively tuning a radio from one station to another, hoping to find interesting aural content. Meaning is supplied by the participant's interpretation, which, in turn, depends on memory, cultural context, and previous hearing experiences. Sound Spheres suggests that engaging narratives can be created from non-dialogic sound sources. And, through its remix of radio, aural narratives, and non-linear composition, Sound Spheres demonstrates new methods for creating and experiencing interactive digital storytelling.

radioELO archives and curates aural information associated with works of electronic literature. This might include author traversals of their work(s) during which they discuss their inspirations and problem solving, or the state of electronic literature at the time of their creation(s). Reevaluations and retrospectives, commentary and reviews, even testimonials, memoirs, and oral histories may also be included. Beyond spoken voice, radioELO also archives soundtracks, soundscapes, and sound collages associated with or considered as individual works of electronic literature. With such information available for on demand, online listening, radioELO is a laboratory in which to examine and discuss the changing nature(s) of electronic literature. Works featured in radioELO are: eLiterature A-Z (Roderick Coover), Soundscapes and Computational Audio-Visual Works (Jim Bizzochi and Justine Bizzochi), Song for the Working Fly (Alan Bigelow), No Booze Tonight (Steven Wingate), ARCHIVERSE In Relation ELO 2014 (Jeff T. Johnson and Andrew Klobucar), The Obsolete Book in a Post-Obsolete World as Represented by a Post-Obsolete Book About Dance (Eric Suzanne), “Where’s Waldo?::Where’s the Text?” (John Barber), Sc4nda1 in New Media (Stuart Moulthrop), Radio Salience (Stuart Moulthrop), Under Language (Stuart Moulthrop), Circuits—from River Island (John Cayley), Califia (M. D. Coverley), The Unknown (William Gillespie, Scott Rettberg, Frank Marquardt, and Dirk Stratton), The Roar of Destiny (Judy Malloy), Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (John McDaid), Pieces for Simultaneous Voices (Jim Rosenberg). All sound fragments are available at the source listed below.

(Source: http://radionouspace.net/radioelo.html)

I have an old theory that all the actual things (structures, ideas and so on…) are already in the air. Every poet is like a radio. He has to have an antenna (spiritual self) for getting the things (waves, ideas…) from the air. But he has to have tuning knob for getting signal clear – and that is his professional skills. And also he needs loudspeakers for making the sound powerful and recognizable – that’s his talent. Sometimes people have an antenna but their tuning knob is not precise enough. Sometimes their loudspeakers are too quiet… Actually I wrote one poem about a person – a young girl – who is at the same time a radio wave and in 2001 we, with the animator Diana Palijchuk, made a poetry video based on this poem. (interview with Sergej Timofeev)

Along with the possibility of technical reproduction provided by the printing machine the individualization of authorship came in the 18th century, as well as the invention of copyright. During the 20th century, a diversity of artistic attemps was undertaken in order to deconstruct individual authorship and the implied ideas about geniality and originality.

Started by Dada and continued by the Surrealists one can follow this development which now faces an expected culmination, caused by the rise of the digital media. Playing with identities, the availability of an endless amout of material and information on the Net, the possibility of copying without loss of quality, as well as anonymous and decentralized ways of distribution have formed a networked culture which often makes it impossible to identify a single author. And also the works are in a permanent state of re-work and variation.

"Generative art" is a special variation of this networked culture. Here, authorship very often is distributed to several contributors - for example the user, the programer, the artist who makes the concept and provides the environment, the authors of the re-worked 'original' material, and most import the computer(-program). A consequent handling of this kind of art, makes it hard to almost impossible to categorize it by parameters like "authorship" and "originality" on which not only the art world but also copyright is based.

The radio play "Automatically Generated Auhtorship" tries to relate in form and content to the described development. Four characters represent the different layers of discourse around the issue: a male and a female computer voice, as well as a male and a female human voice. The spoken text, noise and generative music compositions comprising the radio play have been rendered from a jump-cutting timeline. Although the content is seeded by the authors (Sollfrank & Didymus), the final form has been left purely to a software based music-engine to arrange.

The shock of jump-cutting, the un-fixing of order, creates new symbiotic meanings and relationships, manifesting not only as a disruption of the codes of listening, but also perhaps more importantly a 'bringing together' of ideas not (fully) intended by the artists. This act demonstrates the seductiveness of the timeline, and time based media in general.

"Radio Salience" is an image-text-sound instrument with certain game-like features.  The player (user? listener? reader?) watches an array of four image panels, showing component slices from various larger images.  When any two slices match, slot-machine style, a click will initiate a poetastic moment.  There is no score, so no way to win, lose, or escape.  Radio is all.

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"I have known that which the Greeks do not know -- uncertainty" (Borges).

Just another entry in the Babylon Lottery, this project explores indeterminacy, accident, and resonance, taking as its muse the breathless voice of the airwaves, or radio.   What did those Greeks know, anyway?

Some may ask, are we yet reading?  Well, somebody had to, but in most cases they weren't human. No sirens were harmed, and no one is like to drown.  Also, this is once again not a game. Though what you will see is certainly playable, there is no real contest, no score, no leveling.  Let's play Twister, let's play Risk.

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The screen is divided into four panes, each containing a changing image: actually, a pair of images stacked atop one another, with the upper constantly fading, up or down. Though the colors of these images have been distorted, you'll notice some of them fit together, either as slices of a single picture, or elements of a series.  When two or more of the four panes belong to a single set, click the mouse.  You'll see the full image, accompanied by a gloss or reading. However, if you click while none of the four images match, play is over.  (You can always restart.)  You can only match on an image while it is at least 50% opaque, so be careful about clicking when one of the panes seems ambiguous. If you don't want to listen all the way through a reading, just click.

(Source: Author's description)