Radio Lab
The CTM Radio Lab at CTM 2014 is dedicated to exploration and experimentation within the medium of radio. The Lab programme will feature two projects commissioned by Deutschlandradio Kultur/Klangkunst, Goethe-Institut, ICAS – International Cities for Advanced Sound, ECAS – European Cities for Advanced Sound, and CTM Festival.
The "Ubiquitous Art and Sound" Open Call for Works, which sought unusual ideas for pairing the specific artistic possibilities of radio with the potentials of live performance or installation, that also explores the omnipresence of sound in our everyday lives. Both projects are designed to invite the participation of festival attendees.
Walk That Sound
"Walk That Sound" by Lukatoyboy uses the commonplace yet often forgotten walkie-talkie to create a moving urban sound portrait based around Kottbusser Tor in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
The project plays with the array of available and free frequencies, and the almost unlimited amount of users that can interact over these different channels, to capture crackling dialogues ranging from the banal to extremely urgent, as well as the multitude of sounds captured by chance while participants rove around the city as "mobile scouts".
How to Participate?
From 27.1.–1.2.2014 between 18-19h, anyone and everyone is invited to become a mobile scout by temporarily exchange their ID for a walkie-talkie at the project base at West Germany in Kreuzberg. Suggested guidelines for use, and daily topics to explore will be provided. Speakers of all languages are welcome. Please note that due to availability, the project is limited to eight scouts at a time.
Meanwhile, others may listen in on the scouts’ transmissions in West Germany, as Lukatoyboy mixes a selection of the scouted sonic treasures live.
Lukatoyboy will present the culmination of a week’s worth of walkie-talkie play with a closing performance, along with fellow Radio Lab commission winners ∏-node, at West Germany on Sunday 2.2. "Walk that Sound" will subsequently be broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur / Klangkunst on 14.2.2014, at 0h05.
"Walk That Sound" will also be presented as an ORF Ö1 broadcast, as well as at the ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst festival in Graz.
∏-node
∏-node is an experimental platform for hybrid Web/FM radiophonic composition. As a multi-dimensional radio infrastructure platform, ∏-node explores the narrative, participative, and imaginary possibilities of radio through the use of both historic and new, digital technologies.
∏-node aims to explore the many dimensions of radio’s format and diffusion: its physicality (ether, radio waves, and the electromagnetic spectrum), its spatiality (bandwith, frequencies), its infrastructure (network of radio receivers/emitters), its methods of creation and editorial content management (programming boards/teams, recording studios), its methods of metadata reception (RDS/SDR), its history (radios libres and pirate radio movements), its legislation. Most importantly, ∏-node also wishes to examine radio’s future at a time when everything is moved towards "the digital".
The interconnectedness of these various dimensions, tools, and networks allow for the establishment of a decentralized and hitherto unseen diffusion structure, where each of the network’s nodes serve to both receive and diffuse information. Such a structure creates a break with the classic one-way radio format, substituting it with a horizontal peer-to-peer model that creates room to play with new potentials for multi-diffusion and superposition, as well as room to rethink the radio network’s topology.
How To Participate?
∏-node will be broadcasting its hybrid radio stream online, 24 hours a day, from 24.1.–2.2.2014 via http://p-node.org. Both local Berliners and radio/hacker enthusiasts worldwide are invited to feed content (live music, streams, talks) into ∏-node’s diffusion stream as of 24.1. via an IRC (internet relay chat) on the group's website.
Those in Berlin are invited to visit ∏-node at its week-long home in the Where is Jesus? café (20.1–2.2.2014, daily 11–22h), and to participate in the project by building radio transmitters and various devices such as small radios, cheap emitters/transmitters, and frequency jammers.
The public is also invited to search for radio transmitters diffusing ∏-Node’s ongoing, 24-hour broadcasts. Transmitters will be placed in different locations in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood daily, and indicated on the p-node.org map.
∏-node’s experimentation will culminate in a final event on Sunday 2.2.2014 at West Germany and will subsequently be broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur / Klangkunst on 07.2.2014, 0h05.
∏-node and "Walk that Sound" are co-commissioned by Deutschlandradio Kultur / Klangkunst, Goethe-Institut, ICAS, ECAS, musikprotokoll, and CTM Festival.
