TRANSMISIÓN
ARTS
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Early electromagnetic spectrum chart produced by Westinghouse Research Laboratories
in the early-twentieth century.
TRANSMISSION ARTS
The Air that Surrounds Us
Galen Joseph-Hunter
W hen speaking about Transmission Arts in terms of contemporary media
and conceptual art, quantifying the movement is an implicitly difficult
charge. In simplest terms “Transmission Arts” is defined as a multiplicity
of practices and media working with the idea of transmission or the physical prop-
erties of the electromagnetic spectrum (radio). Transmission works often manifest
themselves in participatory live art or time-based art, and include, but are not limited
a, sound, video, luz, installation, and performance. Like the work encompassed
by the genre, its lineage is anything but linear.
Influenced by Futurism in music, ruido, velocidad, experimentation and improvisation
with and about machinery and technology are all reoccurring areas of interest. El
spirit of Fluxus is also frequently encountered when works are centered around the
indeterminacy of spectrum content, whether it be manipulation of commercial radio
in any present moment, or the harnessing of solar data to inform design and move-
mento. kinetic art is also an obvious ancestor to transmission works that take sculptural
forma, and here, motion might materialize in the physical, aural, or visual.
Perhaps the most explicit predecessors are the media collectives that emerged in the
1970s to see a radical opportunity in video as a tool that might at long-last realize
democratic cultural communication networks. In the following decades, artists’
experimentation with global technologies including telephone, fax, and satellite also
aimed to put new communication tools in the hands of artists and the public. Más tarde,
in the 1990s, the Microradio movement empowered a wave of radio practitioners
and activists dedicated to a specific cause: providing the public with licensed access
to their own airwaves.
En 1997 then journalist and DJ Tom Roe, musician Greg Anderson, and painter
Violet Hopkins formed the collective free103point9 in Brooklyn, Nueva York. Aligned
with the Microradio movement, free103point9’s activities in the early years were
focused on providing local communities access to their own airwaves. En ese tiempo
free103point9 principals tirelessly traveled around New York City rooftops, transmit-
ter and antenna in-tow, microcasting local bands, community meetings, and other
happenings to listeners in the event’s surrounding few block radius.
34 PAJ 93 (2009), páginas. 34–40.
© 2009 Galen Joseph-Hunter
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As a result of these activities, a notable community of free103point9 collaborating
artists emerged who were interested in the act of transmission as creative expression,
conceptually and formally. For these artists, microradio was not simply a distribution
device, but rather an exciting gateway to experimentation with the entire (electro-
magnetic) spectrum. En 2002, free103point9 responded and evolved from artist
collective to non-profit organization with the specific mission of establishing and
cultivating the Transmission Art genre. Supportive of “radio art” and “creative radio”
the “transmission art” nomenclature was carefully selected to encompass not only
linear works made for radio dissemination, but multifaceted and interdisciplinary
works created through the full radio spectrum in its broadest definition.
As a means to illustrate such efforts, freee103point9 regularly presents a number
of public programs engineered to demystify the architecture of the transmission
spectrum. They include:
Tune(En)))s are sound events designed for a virtually silent environment in which
listeners experience multiple live performances in individual radio headsets as opposed
to amplified ones within a performance space. Audience members encounter other
signals on the FM dial as they navigate among the Tune(En))) frecuencias, de este modo
considering the spectrum as a potential venue in and of itself.1
Radio 4×4 is a collaborative radio transmission performance. Four simultaneous
audio performances are separately sent through FM transmitters tuned to different
frequencies and are picked up by radios positioned throughout a performance space
and tuned to those four frequencies. The audience becomes an active collaborator
in the performance, “mixing” the audio feeds by moving about the space among
the four signals.2
Microradio Sound Walk is a multiple transmitter sound piece and walking tour of
local artist-generated airwaves. The piece consists of multiple transmission stations
situated along a loosely defined walking path tuned to a single frequency but with a
limited range. At each station an artist creates a soundscape on a single FM frequency
that responds to both the architecture and sonic phenomena of a specific space.
Listeners with radios tuned to the project frequency proceed through the route in
the order of their choosing; as they move farther away from one station and come
closer to the next, the signal they receive will shift. This sonic progression maps the
spatial qualities of an area’s local airwaves.3
The past, present, and future of Transmission Arts is the focus of this special section
of PAJ. It features contributions from artists Joe Milutis, Max Goldfarb, Anna Friz,
Brett Ian Balogh, Tom Roe, and Alexis Bhagat, in the shape of essays, sketches,
documentation, fiction, and instructions. These works assist in establishing a gene-
alogy of a genre. They demonstrate the diversity of transmission art practices and
practitioners, and are unified by a continuous query into transmission as a mode
for two-way communication rather than one-way distribution. (Sound works by
contributing artists may be accessed via the electronic version of PAJ.)
JOSEPH-HUNTER / The Air that Surrounds Us 35
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The Transmission Arts section content begins with “Bottled” by artist and writer
Joe Milutis. Disguised as a rebuking of what Milutis suggests would be a reductive
historia, he puts forth an expansive hypothesis of the genre’s possible—probable—
foundation. Milutis focuses on the “message in a bottle” as a deceptively simple
demonstration of transmission. The message, its journey on waves and its unpredict-
able and uncertain reception, encompasses the key elements that intrigue, excite,
and haunt transmission artists and audiences.
Max Goldfarb’s Deep Cycle: The Reincarnation of Herman Meydag is a broadcast, instal-
lación, and publication featuring Mobile49, a retrofit emergency communications
truck. The Deep Cycle project is responsive to the present energy crisis, considering a
potential post-oil future. The project begins with the redesign of the vehicle’s internal
functions and a transition to a renewable power system. The second stage of the
project involves vehicle transport to its destination; during transit, live programming
will be broadcast on FM and online. Upon eventual arrival at its site, modification
of the vehicle will be completed for installation as a permanent radio emergency
field station embedded in the rural landscape. Finalmente, Goldfarb will produce a book,
part project document, and part operators’ manual for Mobile49. Included here are
Goldfarb’s sketches in preparation for this multi-faceted project.
In her essay “Transmission Art in the Present Tense,” Anna Friz observes a cohesive
thread in contemporary transmission art as work that challenges and disrupts con-
ventional and limited use of the electromagnetic spectrum; the very act of creative
transmission is not only an exercise in self-awareness but also asks the question of
“who’s there.” Friz reflects upon transception (transmission + reception) as envi-
sioned by Bertolt Brecht and a host of others who believe radio to be an intrinsi-
cally democratic medium, and suggests that contemporary practitioners’ work to
achieve this vision aims to “de-industrialize communication” achieving resonance
rather than radiation.
Brett Ian Balogh’s Programmable Transmission Art Platform is comprised of a low-power
FM transmitter, Arduino board, and USB-serial module. This flexible and accessible
device is intended as a tool for artists exploring transmission practices. Illustrated
and described in pages included in this section, Balogh’s Platform will be available
to artists through free103point9’s Dispatch Series winter/spring 2010.
Tom Roe’s June 3, 2123 is a dark and comic radio play that counters the idealis-
tic foundations of the genre with a dystopian apocalyptic vision. Through Roe’s
omniscient narration, we meet radioman “Watt,” and learn of “solar storms” and
frequencies gone awry. In a moment of clarity, Watt realizes that Morse Code might
be civilization’s last chance. Roe’s narrative uses cosmic irony to predict a future
consumed and doomed by transmission waves.
The section concludes with Alexis Bhagat’s Instructions for Listening to Radio. Bhagat
invites participation from the reader with his instructional work and event score.
An homage to work by Yoko Ono, John Cage, and Alison Knowles, here the art
literally exists in both the conception and realization. Bhagat’s provocative exercise
36 PAJ 93
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demonstrates the viability of correspondence or mail art and Deep Listening (como
coined by Pauline Oliveros) within the transmission art spectrum.
En 2009, television broadcast stations in all United States markets will retire their
analog transmissions. Projections for radios’ transition are currently forecasted for
2017. Consumer and commercial demand suggests that much of this abandoned
spectrum will be reallocated for cellular phones and “smart” devices. With these
evolutions transmission artists will have access to more and more technology suit-
able for re-configuration and re-use, yet simultaneously will be faced with a fiercely
regulated palette with which to create. Illustrated and discussed in the following
paginas, transmission practices occur in active, live works that are at once both private
and public. Uniquely complex, these works serve as activist assertions about public
space even in their most poetic manifestations.
NOTES
1. Tune(En))) premiered on March 1, 2003 at the NY Center for Media Arts in Long Island
City, in celebration of free103point9’s sixth anniversary. Since then Tune(En)))s have been
presented at the The Kitchen in New York, the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico, y el
free103point9 Wave Farm in Acra, Nueva York. A forthcoming Tune(En))) will be presented
in connection with the Visual Art Peformace Biennial PERFORMA 09, in November at the
World Financial Center Winter Garden Atrium in lower Manhattan. The Tune(En))) concepto
was originally inspired by Chuck Stephens who suggested using a radio transmitter for a
silent rave as a way to combat events being shutdown due to noise complaints.
2. Radio 4×4 was conceived of by free103point9 staff members in 2003. Since then, encima
twenty Radio 4x4s have taken place in the United States and abroad.
3. Microradio Sound Walk premiered in 2004 con, and conceived by, free103point9
transmission artists Damian Catera, Matt Mikas, Michelle Nagai, and Tom Roe. It was
presented in conjunction with Spectropolis: Mobile Media, Art and the City, a three-day
event in New York City that highlighted the diverse ways artists, technical innovators, y
activists are using communication technologies to generate urban experiences and public
voice. Más recientemente, in July 2009, a Microradio Sound Walk was presented at the Ingenuity
Fest in Cleveland, Ohio.
GALEN JOSEPH-HUNTER is the Executive Director of free103point9,
a non-profit arts organization active both in New York City and upstate
Nueva York. 1norte 2008, the FCC awarded free103point9 with a full-power,
non-commercial FM license. The station, WGXC, will be both a com-
munity and transmission art media project. free103point9’s in-progress
Transmission Art Archive project will map a genealogy of Transmission
artists, obras, exhibitions, essays, and more in support of the Transmis-
sion Art Genre. The first phase of the Transmission Art Archive will be a
publication released in late 2009. The second phase of the project will be
an expansive online resource and network in which artists are encouraged
to self-identify their work within the context of Transmission Art practices.
(www.free103point9.org)
JOSEPH-HUNTER / The Air that Surrounds Us 37
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Circular Spectral Analyzer, Cross Current Resonance Transducer (Douglas Repetto and LoVid), 2008.
Circular Spectral Analyzer (CSA) fuses signal aesthetics and environmental functionality in a kinetic
installation featured in the free103point9 transmission sculpture garden at Wave Farm in Acra, Nueva York.
Solar energy powers and tunes a short wave radio while driving the sculpture’s motorized elements. El
etchings and forms in the sculpture are interpretations of seven months of recorded solar data from seven
different locations in NY State. Photo: Courtesy Laura Blereau.
38 PAJ 93
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Chop 10 by Tarikh Korula. Installed in the Airborne exhibition co-presented by free103point9 at
the New Museum for Contemporary Art, Nueva York, 2005. Exploiting the techniques of current
commercial radio practice, Chop 10 re-mixes a live, dynamic assemblage of commercial radio
streams as a commentary on the current state of regulated radio. As Chop 10 moves from one
Arbitron-rated Top Ten radio station in New York City to the next, the hyper “scan” makes it
impossible to discern any single station’s content, resulting in a jumpy, never-ending parody of
commercial radio. Photo: Courtesy Matthew Spiegelman.
JOSEPH-HUNTER / The Air that Surrounds Us 39
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Studies for Radio Transceiver by Matthew Burtner. Performed during the Spectral Garden event at
free103point9 Wave Farm, 2006. Studies for Radio Transceiver questions the nature of the radio medium
and the role it plays in forming the content of a musical system. Photo: Courtesy David La Spina.
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40 PAJ 93
