Thoughts About Sound - A collection of Articles about Sound by Victoria
Why Radio Producers Need to Soundwalk
If I was the producer of a current affairs radio program,
I would start my daily story meeting by taking the researchers, producers, technicians, and hosts out for a walk.
The objective of the walk wouldn’t be to go for coffee or talk about the next show. Instead,
I’d ask them to be silent and to listen to the rhythms of their community, the community that they talk to each day.
A soundwalk is a time to be silent and to let the community to talk to us. It’s meditative space in an all too busy day.
A soundwalk is a time to be silent and to let the community to talk to us. It’s meditative space in an all too busy day.
For me, it’s a time to get a different perspective ... to let the sounds interact with my psyche and let them tell me what they want me to know, rather than the other way around.I have been soundwalking for about three years now, and producing radio for about twenty.
I first learned about soundwalking from Hildegard Westerkamp, an exceptional audio artist and listener. My first introduction to soundwalking was a radio series that she had done for Vancouver Co-op Radio back in the early ‘80's. These programs took listeners to a train station, a blacksmith’s shop, Stanley Park on New Year’s Eve, and many other places in the city. After listening to Hildi’s recordings I never heard my environment quite the same way again.
Since that time, I have had the opportunity to soundwalk with several other Canadian artists, including Andra McCartney, Darren Copeland, Wende Bartley, Claude Schryer, and Ellen Waterman. And even though I’ve never had the experience of soundwalking with R. Murray Schafer, I must also acknowledge his considerable influence. There is a good chance that none of us would be doing this kind of work had he not walked ahead of us and mapped the way.
What I have discovered is that there are a wide variety of soundwalking styles. No two people soundwalk in the same way. I remember one of my first soundwalks with Hildegard when I was just a novice. A group of eight of us had gathered for a summer workshop in Ottawa. Soundwalking was a new concept to all of us, and none of us were quite sure what to listen for, so at various points during our half hour walk around the National Library and down to the Ottawa River, she stopped so we could all discuss what we heard. After listening to our mostly obvious reports of what we had heard, she suggested that we try to listen in a more musical way, seeking out the beats, rhythms and tone colours of the soundscape. Her gentle guidance was appreciated as we learned to open our ears to things that our brains had previously had blocked out.
What I remember most about Hildegard’s style of soundwalking is her constant reference to listening to sounds in context. Sounds do not exist in isolation - they all have their own meanings, and are formed within a specific space and time. I also learned that we need not be just an observer -- we are also a participant in the soundscape. We can create our own sounds in real time as we soundwalk (whether through our own footsteps, through vocalizing, or by “playing” blades of grass or stones to create new sounds) or we can take back recordings of the sounds we hear and transform them into new soundscapes in our studio.
From Darren Copeland, I learned how to recreate what I was hearing. My soundwalks with Darren happened a few years after my first walks with Hildegard, and were done with people who had already done considerable sound art work of their own. Darren’s soundwalking approach with us was structured and each one of us had a job to do. One of us was asked to count sounds, another person’s job was to listen to the shape of the sound and do a quick sketch of what it looked like. Another person’s job was to listen for “global” changes in the soundscape as we moved from one sound environment to another. At the end of the walk, we worked together to create a sound score upon which we would base a group composition. What I learned from Darren is contrast, density, structure. I learned ways to reproduce a soundscape in an authentic way long after the actual experience of the soundwalk was over. And I learned how to remember what I’d heard so that I could reproduce it later in the studio.
I learn different things from each person with whom I soundwalk. Each one of us brings a different set of priorities and perceptions to the experience.
Most of the soundwalkers I know are composers, not radio people. As a radio soundmaker, I am always wondering how my own style is different from that of my friends who approach sound from a different place than I do. My soundwalks have shown me that for seventeen of these twenty years, there were probably things about my community that I was missing because I never took the time to be still and hear the subtleties.
Radio people don’t listen - they talk. There are too many deadlines, and there are never enough people to do the work we have to do. Time is a tyrant, and ??the world of a radio producer is noisy and chaotic. Consequently, the world we reflect back to the listener often reflects the chaos that we feel.
We often forget to remind ourselves that the world isn’t just chaos. I have realised that radio producers can benefit from soundwalking because they learn to connect on a deeper level with the rhythms and heartbeats of their communities and their lives. Through my soundwalks, I have discovered that yes, the chaos does exist, but so does rhythm, harmony, beauty and joy. For me, my soundwalks are about hearing the full range of experience, not just the loudest.
But soundwalking is something that radio people don’t consciously do, at least not yet. For the radio producers who are reading this -- here are some of the reasons why I think you need to soundwalk:
a) Your hearing will sharpen. You’ll hear not just words, but also rhythms, patterns and natural tonalities that you didn’t hear before. You’ll hear combinations of sounds and hear things in a way that’s almost musical. You’ll hear how the high treble buzz of summer cicadas plays against the distant low frequency roar of an overhead jet. You’ll hear the soprano ascending squeal of bus brakes as it pulls into the depot. You’ll find yourself paying much more attention to the sounds that go behind and beyond the words. You’ll find yourself not wanting to use the term “background sound” anymore. Instead, the sounds will become an integral part of your documentaries, not just “sonic embroidery”.
b) You’ll hear things that will make you ask more questions. You’ll hear things that you haven’t heard before ... a random fragment of conversation, a sound that seems out of place ... you might even get a new story idea. These subtle sounds are quiet clues which will speak to you and reveal your community’s unique identity.
c) You will also hear yourself. My ideal soundwalk is one where I focus outwardly with my listening and concentrate on the external world, rather than the one which exists in my own mind. But what always emerges is a blending of the inner world with the outer. As my yoga instructor says, the goal is to stop dwelling on the past or chasing the future. When we listen intently and focus on the sounds of the moment, the result is a peaceful soul which allows itself to rest.
This fusion of the inner and outer world helps us to hear more clearly. When we hear clearly, we can speak more clearly to our communities. Eventually we hear the entire range of sounds in the place where we live, not just those that are loud enough to demand our immediate attention. We can put the noise and the chaos in its proper context if we give ourselves the space and time to hear the entire soundscape.
Perhaps most importantly, soundwalking gets us outside of the four walls of the radio station. Too many radio programs are created by people spend every working day within a studio or office, not even emerging for lunch or to breathe some fresh air. It is impossible to truly tell the stories of a city that you only see from the windows of a subway to and from the office.
Real life does not happen in a studio. It happens out on the street, or in a park, or on the playground. Instead of inviting your next guest into the studio, get out there and capture them in their own environment, in all of its sonic splendour!
I first learned about soundwalking from Hildegard Westerkamp, an exceptional audio artist and listener. My first introduction to soundwalking was a radio series that she had done for Vancouver Co-op Radio back in the early ‘80's. These programs took listeners to a train station, a blacksmith’s shop, Stanley Park on New Year’s Eve, and many other places in the city. After listening to Hildi’s recordings I never heard my environment quite the same way again.
Since that time, I have had the opportunity to soundwalk with several other Canadian artists, including Andra McCartney, Darren Copeland, Wende Bartley, Claude Schryer, and Ellen Waterman. And even though I’ve never had the experience of soundwalking with R. Murray Schafer, I must also acknowledge his considerable influence. There is a good chance that none of us would be doing this kind of work had he not walked ahead of us and mapped the way.
What I have discovered is that there are a wide variety of soundwalking styles. No two people soundwalk in the same way. I remember one of my first soundwalks with Hildegard when I was just a novice. A group of eight of us had gathered for a summer workshop in Ottawa. Soundwalking was a new concept to all of us, and none of us were quite sure what to listen for, so at various points during our half hour walk around the National Library and down to the Ottawa River, she stopped so we could all discuss what we heard. After listening to our mostly obvious reports of what we had heard, she suggested that we try to listen in a more musical way, seeking out the beats, rhythms and tone colours of the soundscape. Her gentle guidance was appreciated as we learned to open our ears to things that our brains had previously had blocked out.
What I remember most about Hildegard’s style of soundwalking is her constant reference to listening to sounds in context. Sounds do not exist in isolation - they all have their own meanings, and are formed within a specific space and time. I also learned that we need not be just an observer -- we are also a participant in the soundscape. We can create our own sounds in real time as we soundwalk (whether through our own footsteps, through vocalizing, or by “playing” blades of grass or stones to create new sounds) or we can take back recordings of the sounds we hear and transform them into new soundscapes in our studio.
From Darren Copeland, I learned how to recreate what I was hearing. My soundwalks with Darren happened a few years after my first walks with Hildegard, and were done with people who had already done considerable sound art work of their own. Darren’s soundwalking approach with us was structured and each one of us had a job to do. One of us was asked to count sounds, another person’s job was to listen to the shape of the sound and do a quick sketch of what it looked like. Another person’s job was to listen for “global” changes in the soundscape as we moved from one sound environment to another. At the end of the walk, we worked together to create a sound score upon which we would base a group composition. What I learned from Darren is contrast, density, structure. I learned ways to reproduce a soundscape in an authentic way long after the actual experience of the soundwalk was over. And I learned how to remember what I’d heard so that I could reproduce it later in the studio.
I learn different things from each person with whom I soundwalk. Each one of us brings a different set of priorities and perceptions to the experience.
Most of the soundwalkers I know are composers, not radio people. As a radio soundmaker, I am always wondering how my own style is different from that of my friends who approach sound from a different place than I do. My soundwalks have shown me that for seventeen of these twenty years, there were probably things about my community that I was missing because I never took the time to be still and hear the subtleties.
Radio people don’t listen - they talk. There are too many deadlines, and there are never enough people to do the work we have to do. Time is a tyrant, and ??the world of a radio producer is noisy and chaotic. Consequently, the world we reflect back to the listener often reflects the chaos that we feel.
We often forget to remind ourselves that the world isn’t just chaos. I have realised that radio producers can benefit from soundwalking because they learn to connect on a deeper level with the rhythms and heartbeats of their communities and their lives. Through my soundwalks, I have discovered that yes, the chaos does exist, but so does rhythm, harmony, beauty and joy. For me, my soundwalks are about hearing the full range of experience, not just the loudest.
But soundwalking is something that radio people don’t consciously do, at least not yet. For the radio producers who are reading this -- here are some of the reasons why I think you need to soundwalk:
a) Your hearing will sharpen. You’ll hear not just words, but also rhythms, patterns and natural tonalities that you didn’t hear before. You’ll hear combinations of sounds and hear things in a way that’s almost musical. You’ll hear how the high treble buzz of summer cicadas plays against the distant low frequency roar of an overhead jet. You’ll hear the soprano ascending squeal of bus brakes as it pulls into the depot. You’ll find yourself paying much more attention to the sounds that go behind and beyond the words. You’ll find yourself not wanting to use the term “background sound” anymore. Instead, the sounds will become an integral part of your documentaries, not just “sonic embroidery”.
b) You’ll hear things that will make you ask more questions. You’ll hear things that you haven’t heard before ... a random fragment of conversation, a sound that seems out of place ... you might even get a new story idea. These subtle sounds are quiet clues which will speak to you and reveal your community’s unique identity.
c) You will also hear yourself. My ideal soundwalk is one where I focus outwardly with my listening and concentrate on the external world, rather than the one which exists in my own mind. But what always emerges is a blending of the inner world with the outer. As my yoga instructor says, the goal is to stop dwelling on the past or chasing the future. When we listen intently and focus on the sounds of the moment, the result is a peaceful soul which allows itself to rest.
This fusion of the inner and outer world helps us to hear more clearly. When we hear clearly, we can speak more clearly to our communities. Eventually we hear the entire range of sounds in the place where we live, not just those that are loud enough to demand our immediate attention. We can put the noise and the chaos in its proper context if we give ourselves the space and time to hear the entire soundscape.
Perhaps most importantly, soundwalking gets us outside of the four walls of the radio station. Too many radio programs are created by people spend every working day within a studio or office, not even emerging for lunch or to breathe some fresh air. It is impossible to truly tell the stories of a city that you only see from the windows of a subway to and from the office.
Real life does not happen in a studio. It happens out on the street, or in a park, or on the playground. Instead of inviting your next guest into the studio, get out there and capture them in their own environment, in all of its sonic splendour!
Yoga for the Ears
You can do a soundwalk anywhere. Wherever there is sound,
you have the necessary ingredients for a soundwalk.
A soundwalk is a time to focus on nothing but the sounds around you.
It is like a meditation, but is different because a meditation is usually about listening to the sounds inside. The soundwalk is about connecting with the outer world.
A soundwalk is a time to focus on nothing but the sounds around you.
It is like a meditation, but is different because a meditation is usually about listening to the sounds inside. The soundwalk is about connecting with the outer world.
How To Do A Soundwalk
You can do a soundwalk anywhere. Wherever there is sound, you have the necessary ingredients for a soundwalk.A soundwalk is a time to focus on nothing but the sounds around you. It is like a meditation, but is different because a meditation is usually about listening to the sounds inside. The soundwalk is about connecting with the outer world. Try to turn off your brain for a while. Listen to the sounds coming into your ears, rather than the things you need to do for the rest of the day, the paper you have due, or the deadline coming up.
What to Wear, What to Bring
You don’t need any special equipment, unless you are recording your soundwalk at the same time. Pay attention to what you’re wearing, though. Some clothes are noisier than others, so you want to wear the quietest ones you can find. Cotton and wool is good. Nylon is not. Unless you intentionally want the sound of your feet in the soundwalk, wear soft shoes instead of clicky heels. Jackets with buttons are better than jackets with zippers – zipper tabs jangle when you walk. (You can also tape them down) Empty the change and keys from your pockets.It is also helpful to bring a journal so you can write down the things you hear. If you are an audio artist and producer, this will also help if you need to recreate a sound environment in the studio. Keep lists, write descriptions or you can even draw a picture of the sound. Whatever will help you remember the sound.
Getting Ready
To prepare for a soundwalk, you can do some warmup exercises for your ears, much like you’d stretch your legs before a long walk:1. Start with earplugs. Put them in for just a couple of minutes. Listen to what silence sounds like. This will help you clear your ears and begin with a fresh perspective. Your hearing will be sharper once you’ve taken them out because the sounds you will be hearing will be new.
2. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply for a couple of minutes. Be present in the environment to which you are listening. Calm down the excess chatter going on in your head, reminding yourself that the goal is to listen to the external rather than your internal soundscape.
3. Listen to the sound of your breath as an overlay on the soundscape. Play with your breath and listen to it in relation to the other sounds you are hearing. For example, focus on the sound of an approaching car. Pattern your breath on the sound of the car. Begin to inhale softly when you hear the car in the distance. Inhale louder as it approaches and passes, then exhale, first quickly then softly falling away as the car retreats. Working with your breath will do two things. It will help clear your mind of the excess clutter , helping you be fully present to sound because you are listening to your breath and the sound together.
4. Focus on one sound that you especially like. Go into the sound. Feel how the sound acts with your body – does it calm you down, energize you, or make you feel frantic? Be there with it for a couple of minutes. Don’t intellectualize.
5. Gradually expand your awareness to the other sounds. Imagine an orchestra tuning up – one sound after another becoming sharper and clearer until you can hear all the sounds in tune with each other.
6. Breathe a couple more times. Now you’re ready to walk.
Start Walking
If you’re walking in a group, don’t talk. If you’re walking by yourself, don’t talk to yourself. That means don’t talk to yourself in your head either.The first thing you’ll hear is the sound of your own footsteps. And, if you’re walking with a group, the sound of their footsteps. To prevent your footsteps from dominating, walk softly. If you’re with a group, spread out as much as you can.
Listen for approaching sounds. Imagine yourself walking into the sound and back out of it again. Stay conscious of your breath as you walk. Breath in a steady pace, walk in a steady pace.
Listen for changes in the sound. Is the acoustic space the same as when you began? When you hear a change in the environment, stop and explore what makes it different. If you’re walking with a group, take a few minutes to talk about what you’ve heard, what you’ve experienced. If you’re walking alone, jot down a few notes in your journal.
Some things to talk about:
- Why did you stop here? How did the soundscape change from the last place your stopped?
- How would you describe this particular soundscape? If you recorded this environment and played it back to someone who hadn’t been on your walk, what would they tell you about this place?
- What is the most interesting sound? Least interesting? Why? If you’re in a group, find out if other people in the group have the same response.
- Think of the pitch and rhythms of the sounds. What is the highest sound? Lowest? Are there any interesting rhythms?
- Count the sounds. How many different types are there? Is there a lot of variety in this soundscape, or are the sounds all similar (i.e. All natural sound, all machine generated?)
- Say a couple of words very softly. Can you hear yourself? Or is the sound of your voice getting lost?
- For radio producers and sound artists – if you played this soundscape for your listeners, would they find it interesting? Can you use this in a story as is? Or would you modify or enhance it in the studio to heighten its effect?
After your soundwalk, try to describe what you’ve heard. If you’re walking with a group, take fifteen minutes to debrief. Other people will hear things differently than you, and by listening to each other you will learn new ways of hearing. If you’re walking alone, write in your journal for fifteen minutes. This will help you increase your ability to remember what you’ve heard.
After you have learned to soundwalk you will probably find that you stop cataloguing the sounds that you hear. Instead you’ll find that at all times and places you will be conscious of the sounds that surround you, whether good or bad, and will be able identify the sounds that make you feel peaceful or happy, and the sounds that cause you to feel apprehensive or disjointed.
Above all, be with yourself. Immerse yourself in your environment. When you can understand your responses to the place where you are, you’ll have a better chance of bringing your listeners along with you.
Those are some preliminary thoughts. To explore it properly, I think it will require an entire book …
Victoria Fenner - Sound Art - A Self Definition
Defining my work has always been a challenge. It doesn't fit neatly into definitions of music, documentary, poetry or even that amorphous term “spoken word”, which is usually associated with live performance.Yet it is all of that. I started thinking in earnest about year ago about what my self-definition should be.
At one point, I used the terms “associative documentary”, because I draw from real sounds but combining them in new ways which move beyond traditional documentary narrative style.
But that doesn't explain at entirely either. I like to explore the intersection between “real” “objective” reality, and my own and others' subjective response to that reality. Which is an entirely different level of reality, and just as valid a way of knowing.
I realized that this is what poetry is. So I decided that I would combine the two disciplines and call myself a Documentary poet.
It seemed an obvious description to me, so I did a google search of the term. And I discovered, as I thought I would, that I hadn't invented that particular phrase. There are a handful of other people using it.
I was both surprised and very happy to find that one of the people who have defined the Documentary Poetry genre was Canadian Poet Dorothy Livesay (1909-1996). I have always admired her poetry for her uncompromising attitude toward the role of women, her brave explorations of women's sexuality; and above all, her commitment to social justice through her writing and also in practice throughout her life. In her article “Documentary Poetry: A Canadian Genre” (1969) she states that documentary poetry is "a conscious attempt to create a dialectic between the objective facts and the subjective feelings of the poet".
I was amazed when I read that. That's exactly what I try to do. I often describe my work as the result of sending a reporter and a poet to the same event and then locking them in a room until they could both come up with one piece they can agree on. It's about the factual story, but just as important, it's about individual, human response to the story and the situation.
Reading Dorothy Livesay's essay made me wish that I had met her. We were both living in Vancouver in the 1980's and I met many writers. I wish she had been one of them. An opportunity missed, but I'm glad we still have her writing.
My style of sound art is heavily influenced by 20 years in radio, working in both radio art and current affairs. I have also been influenced by the soundscape school of composition, particularly the work of Vancouver composer, acoustic ecologist and feminist Hildegard Westerkamp. Another significant influence was the late Howard Broomfield, whose radio program "The Listener" on Vancouver Co-op Radio demonstrated that no word, thought or sound was too trivial and unimportant to be recorded and broadcast. Consequently, my work and aesthetic is rooted in the familiar, recognizable sounds of everyday experience.
To transform these sounds into the realm of the extraordinary is my goal. The line where information becomes art is something which I continue to explore. Having worked in radio current affairs extensively, real world concerns and issues are always a primary focus (though not to the exclusion of all else). In my journalistic work in recent years, I have focused increasingly on social justice issues such as economic justice, gender equality and environment. Using these themes, my style is somewhat analogous to social realism in visual art.
Recently, I have started to explore new ways to presenting sound to audiences, such as live performance, CD and gallery settings. Nonetheless, “radio as artspace” continues to be a major focus of my work, especially in community radio I believe that our airwaves must return to the spirit of the “Golden Age of Radio", when radio was more than canned music, abrasive ads and news bites. Radio stations were living, growing cultural centres where new forms of sonic expression were created daily.
Radio (including internet radio) has yet unrealized potential as a place where art forms such as electronic literature, soundscape compositions, creative documentary and drama can flourish. Radio must once again take its place as cultural producer, not merely a distribution arm for commodified culture, but as a genuine expression of the soul of the people.
I realized that this is what poetry is. So I decided that I would combine the two disciplines and call myself a Documentary poet.
It seemed an obvious description to me, so I did a google search of the term. And I discovered, as I thought I would, that I hadn't invented that particular phrase. There are a handful of other people using it.
I was both surprised and very happy to find that one of the people who have defined the Documentary Poetry genre was Canadian Poet Dorothy Livesay (1909-1996). I have always admired her poetry for her uncompromising attitude toward the role of women, her brave explorations of women's sexuality; and above all, her commitment to social justice through her writing and also in practice throughout her life. In her article “Documentary Poetry: A Canadian Genre” (1969) she states that documentary poetry is "a conscious attempt to create a dialectic between the objective facts and the subjective feelings of the poet".
I was amazed when I read that. That's exactly what I try to do. I often describe my work as the result of sending a reporter and a poet to the same event and then locking them in a room until they could both come up with one piece they can agree on. It's about the factual story, but just as important, it's about individual, human response to the story and the situation.
Reading Dorothy Livesay's essay made me wish that I had met her. We were both living in Vancouver in the 1980's and I met many writers. I wish she had been one of them. An opportunity missed, but I'm glad we still have her writing.
Radio influences
I am first and foremost, a radio artist.My style of sound art is heavily influenced by 20 years in radio, working in both radio art and current affairs. I have also been influenced by the soundscape school of composition, particularly the work of Vancouver composer, acoustic ecologist and feminist Hildegard Westerkamp. Another significant influence was the late Howard Broomfield, whose radio program "The Listener" on Vancouver Co-op Radio demonstrated that no word, thought or sound was too trivial and unimportant to be recorded and broadcast. Consequently, my work and aesthetic is rooted in the familiar, recognizable sounds of everyday experience.
To transform these sounds into the realm of the extraordinary is my goal. The line where information becomes art is something which I continue to explore. Having worked in radio current affairs extensively, real world concerns and issues are always a primary focus (though not to the exclusion of all else). In my journalistic work in recent years, I have focused increasingly on social justice issues such as economic justice, gender equality and environment. Using these themes, my style is somewhat analogous to social realism in visual art.
Recently, I have started to explore new ways to presenting sound to audiences, such as live performance, CD and gallery settings. Nonetheless, “radio as artspace” continues to be a major focus of my work, especially in community radio I believe that our airwaves must return to the spirit of the “Golden Age of Radio", when radio was more than canned music, abrasive ads and news bites. Radio stations were living, growing cultural centres where new forms of sonic expression were created daily.
Radio (including internet radio) has yet unrealized potential as a place where art forms such as electronic literature, soundscape compositions, creative documentary and drama can flourish. Radio must once again take its place as cultural producer, not merely a distribution arm for commodified culture, but as a genuine expression of the soul of the people.
So why do I do this?
It’s time to create a world which has space for our own sounds, and especially our own voices. I hope my work somehow helps carve out a little bit of space in the soundscape for all of us. And helps us all believe that, despite the noise around us, our voices matter.
Radio Art and Its History
(Preface: This article was written at the turn of the century, 2001. At that time, the internet was used primarily for email and webpages which were mostly limited to text and static image. Audio and video on the internet were present, but were taking their first halting, faltering steps towards the multimedia delivery platform that we take for granted now in 2011.
Internet radio had just barely been invented back then. Consequently, the “radio art” that I am writing of in this article is defined as conventional radio, disseminated by AM and especially FM transmitters.
Internet radio is in many ways a different thing than the radio to which I am referring. And some similarities as well. More than ten years later, as I reversion this article for a new technological generation, I am reminding how much radio itself is changing. And it causes me to wonder what new definition of radio is emerging.)
Wise Virginia, 2001, as I sit in front of my computer in my log cabin in the mountains:
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 hear”. Simple as that. 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 type of sound.What is the history of radio art?
For me, the difference between radio art and sound art is that radio art is a subset of sound 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 sound 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 …