Radia Show 992: Resonating Sculptures by Reni Hofmüller, Radio Helsinki (Graz)

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. Nikola Tesla

Sounds of electromagnetic waves, overlapping frequencies of unfathomable spaces – magical, fleeting and touching, these are the electro-poetic worlds of sound that Reni Hofmüller opens up with the antennas of her "Resonating Sculptures." Radiation emissions from the natural and human-made world, the cosmos and the technological environment transformed into sounds: hissing, crackling, hissing, whistling, vibrating, clanking and clicking, humming, buzzing, vibrating and booming, voices, tones and sounds from the radio.

Since 2012, the media artist, musician, composer, organiser and activist has been working with communication spaces that are created and characterised through the use of antennas and interpreted musically and improvisationally in live sets. The sculptures are mobile, small, heavy, expansive, they reference places and spaces for which they were designed, and they each have their own history of creation. These are reflected in the forms as well as the spectrum of what they receive. Eight "Resonating Sculptures" have been created over the past eleven years. In April 2024, a new series of antennas based on the water systems – rivers, drinking water canals and sewage – will open in Scala, Tabakalera, San Sebastian.

As early as the end of the 19th century, Nikola Tesla picked up signals from Jupiter during his first radio experiments and interpreted them using his imagination. The Resonating Sculptures appeal to this power of imagination in the same way as the blue of the deep when diving in the sea or the noise of the radio between the transmitters that suggest a potential, a maybe, a possibly. Hofmüller: “The world opens up for me from my world of sound.”

Each week one member of the Radia Network produces a show for all the others. The Radia Network emerged from a series of meetings, clandestine events, late-night club discussions, and a lot of email exchanges between cultural radio producers across Europe. The topics vary and the reasons for forming a network are many, but Radia has become a concrete manifestation of the desire to use radio as an art form. The approaches differ, as do the local contexts; from commissioned radio art works to struggles for frequencies to copyright concerns, all the radios share the goal of an audio space where something different can happen. That different is also a form in the making – radio sounds different in each city, on each frequency. Taking radio as an art form, claiming that space for creative production in the mediascape and cracking apart the notion of radio is what Radia does.

It is producing radio stuff that is hard to describe. Some of it can be labeled radio art, or experimental radio, or creative radio. Sometimes it talks, sometimes it doesn’t. It can be noisy, or a kind of soundscape, or a documentary, a document, a talk, a performance. Each and every week, one of the partners will provide the network program, commissioned and produced especially for this purpose: being broadcast by all the partners and made available online.

Some things have to be said about all those partners. They are radio stations, of the independent, non-commercial, community, cultural species. They all speak different languages, and this should create interesting problems. Although initially they were all European radio stations this has changed over time and Radia has become not only larger but also more diverse: 17 partners in nine countries and growing all the time.

Radia Stations

* Campus Paris (Paris, FR)
* CFRC 101.9 FM (Kingston, CA)
* CKUT (Montréal, CA)
* JET FM (Nantes, FR)
* Kanal 103 (Skopje, MK)
* Orange 94.0 (Vienna, AT)
* Radio Campus (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Corax (Halle, DE)
* Radio Grenouille (Marseille, FR)
* Radio Helsinki (Graz, AT)
* Radio Nova (Oslo, NO)
* Radio One 91 FM (Dunedin, NZ)
* Radio Panik (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Papesse (Firenze, IT)
* Radio Student (Ljubljana, SI)
* radio x (Frankfurt/Main, DE)
* Rádio Zero (Lisboa, PT)
* RadioWORM (Rotterdam, NL)
* Reboot.fm (Berlin, DE)
* Resonance FM (London, UK)
* Soundart Radio (Dartington, UK)
* TEA FM (Zaragoza, ES)
* Wave Farm WGXC 90.7-FM (New York, USA)
* XL Air (Brussels, BE)

Affiliates

* Kunstradio (Vienna, AT)

More information at http://radia.fm