Thoughts about Sound

Radio Art and its History

Preface: I am frequently asked to define what radio art is, what sound art is, and what the difference between the two artforms are. Truth is, it’s not an easy job. But I have come up with some ideas that I use as my starting point, and here there.

So what is Radio Art? How is it different from sound/audio art?

I define sound art as “art you can here”. My definition is very broad. It can include a well produced audio poem, a sound installation that exists in a gallery space, a soundwalk you listen to on headphones. Sound art is not limited to a particular venue.

What is the history of radio art?

For me, the difference between radio art and audio art is that radio art is a subset of audio art. Radio art is art which is specifically composed for the medium of radio and is uniquely suited to be transmitted via the airwaves.

“What is radio art?” is a question which is answered differently depending on who you’re talking to. That’s why I don’t think we can say there is one definitive history of radio art. At different points in time, artists have used radio in all kinds of settings. Whether they were doing “radio art” or not really depends on who you’re asking and how they define radio art.

There’s not really a comprehensive cohesive history to radio art – often it’s been done at different times by people who aren’t even aware of the other people who have also done amazing radio work. Take for example, The Idea of North, by Glenn Gould. This was a radio documentary composed by Glenn Gould in 1967. Quite likely nobody but a handful of people knew about this documentary when it was originally composed, and it wouldn’t have reached a large listenership back then. But over the years it has become a radio art “standard”, and continues to influence the work of radio artists now, in Canada, and worldwide.

There was a lot of creative radio happening in the first fifty or six years of radio, but the first time I ever heard the term “radio art” was the early ‘80’s. This was a time of burgeoning sound art activity both here in Canada and also in parts of Europe. My first encounter with radio art was in 1982, when I produced the sound art show “newsounds gallery”. There were a handful of stations in Canada doing audio art/radio art at that time. It was then when I also learned about audio art happening in other parts of the world. One of countries noted for its radio art at that time was the Netherlands, but there were also pockets of people doing creative audio in galleries and in community radio stations around the world. I seem to remember that there was a lot of activity coming out of Japan at the time.

Here in Canada, Simon Fraser University was a centre for creative sound production, mostly because of the influence of the World Soundscape Project, established by Canadian composer Murray Schafer.

If I were to sum it all up, I would say that people have done radio art since the earliest days of radio but an awareness of “radio art” as something separate from ordinary day to day broadcasting didn’t emerge until the ‘80’s. Which was also the time of major growth in artist run centres and community radio. And also a time when mainstream radio was beginning its downward slide to commodified, predictable programming. I think it’s possible that radio art began to differentiate itself in the ‘80’s because so much radio was becoming so unartful.

Does all audio art work on the airwaves as “radio art”?

All radio art is sound art, but not all sound art is radio art. The basic difference is that radio art is art which is uniquely suited to the medium of radio.

Just because you can hear it, doesn’t mean radio is the best place to hear it. At the same time, I try to constantly challenge my own assumptions about what you can do on the radio and not. Over the past twenty years in particular, radio producers have significantly narrowed their definition of what is acceptable on the radio. I find myself falling into that myself. In order to make good radio that challenges we have to constantly ask ourselves “what is radio” and be willing to let new ideas come in. My own feeling is that many radio people have a tendency to say “no” to new ideas, almost as an involuntary response. I find myself falling into it myself, just because radio is now a tightly controlled medium where new ideas are not encouraged. Hard not to be influenced by the larger “industrial” model of radio because it’s everywhere.

When is a radio production an “art radio” production?

So now we’re asking “what is art”, a question that we could debate all night into the morning and on into next week.

But I’ll be brave and jump into the fray. What defines for me whether or not it is radio art is the extent that people are putting their own personal creativity into the production they’re doing. For me, radio drama is radio art. A live broadcast of a musical group can also be radio art. A well produced DJ show can also be radio art if there is a spark of originality. I try to be as inclusive as possible. Whether it’s good art or not is an entirely different question. A landscape painting in Wal-Mart is still technically “art”. But you wouldn’t see it hanging in the National Gallery.

What is the role of the listener in radio art?

Another big question. Almost all radio art I have heard (or made) requires involvement on the part of the listener. I like to compare the experience of listening to audio art to walking into an art gallery – (I have switched my terminology from Radio Art to Audio Art here because I think this is a characteristic that both share) – we don’t expect to walk into an art gallery and expect works that are easy to understand. That’s what interpretive guides are for, and that’s why art galleries have people who do tours and explain the work to people (for better or worse). A certain level of literacy is necessary to appreciate some of the more difficult forms of art.

Galleries don’t expect people to understand visual art without help. Generally, radio isn’t known as a medium that challenges people so it’s a foreign concept to put something on the air that explores new territory. Also, audio art has another built-in challenge – other art forms have hundreds of years of tradition behind them. Audio art is still relatively new, so people listening to audio art really don’t have any context to fit it in. We’re all learning as we go along.

In terms of the role of the listener in Radio Art specifically, some of the most exciting radio art projects I’ve heard of are ones which require a response from the listener. For example, we did a Phone Art show at Co-op Radio where people were invited to phone in their art works. This is something which encourages two way dialogue – something that I think is a big strength of radio. It can also get large numbers of people doing the same thing at the same time – for example, a producer in the Netherlands had listeners do a “car ballet” – kind of like a rally where listeners were instructed to flick their lights, back up their cars, take them forward, honk their horns simultaneously .. wish I could have been there to see it all.

Where can you hear radio art on the air?

I don’t think there would be much radio art, if any, without community radio -- community radio provides a place where artists can do radio their own way, and test out what works and what doesn’t. I think community radio’s role is like the artist run centre – a lot of new ideas and new techniques are developed in artist run centres which mainstream galleries won’t be open to for a number of years. Community Radio helps create conditions for new forms of expression to develop.

I think this will always be the case . I think that major broadcasters like CBC and National Public Radio in the States, seems to be more open to audio art more than they have been in the past .. audio art is finally getting to be somewhat trendy. But because of the conservative natures of large broadcasting organizations, they’re more likely to explore audio art within very safe parameters. “Audio art lite”, as an audio art colleague in the States referred to it. But it’s better than nothing. One of my goals as a radio artist is to encourage greater creativity in general on radio. So if it moves them anywhere away from the centre, we’re doing our job.

Speaking personally, I’m really glad we have community radio stations which encourage the growth of audio art. I think stations could be doing more to foster the growth of radio/audio art (i.e. By being more active commissioning artists, hosting workshops for new people interested in audio art etc). But even without all the things I just mentioned, it’s a huge benefit to artists that the airwaves are accessible to them and that they are free to do radio their own way. It ultimately benefits all radio that there are places where people can try out new approaches and new ways to do radio.

Those are some preliminary thoughts. To explore it properly, I think it will require an entire book …

E-mail: fenner@magma.ca

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