TRANSMISSION ART ARCHIVE
Fake Radio
Fake Radio is a digital interface, a musical instrument and a sound sculpture. Fake Radio is based around the concept of radio as an apparatus for reception and transmission in the wireless sphere, both in the use of sound modulation through interaction, as well as the presence of radio frequency radiation through the inner workings of electromagnetic oscillation in the electronic circuit. In Fake Radio, the sound is transmitted and not received.
The audio is generated by a microcontroller, programmed to manage interaction with twelve channels of sound, through twelve potentiometers. Fake Radio can either be used in standalone mode with an internal speaker, or with headphones. It can also be connected to a computer and its sounds further processed using real-time audio software. For live performance Fake Radio has been used with the software max/msp from Cycling74, as an interactive composition for digital sound synthesis, digital sound processing and sampling.
The idea of pure sound and electromagnetic transmission is the core concept of Fake Radio, realized though software and hardware design by the artist. The sounds are created using frequency modulation (FM) synthesis, which is also used in radio transmission to modulate the carrier wave transmitting information. The concept of the programmed internal composition includes, variations in sound and silence; in this composition referred to as fluctuations of time cracks, as well as the dynamics of polyrhythm, and audio spatiality realized by fake panning of the audio output from Fake Radio.
There is also a composition realized by computer programming using external real-time processing. Temporal processes are central to the Fake Radio composition. The external composition includes time stretch, as well as time reversal through sampling of Fake Radio to build further on the concept of polyrhythm. Existing audio output from Fake Radio is further transformed through signal processing as a set of ether filters.