TRANSMISSION ART ARCHIVE
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ALPHA BRAVO CHARLIE: The Phonetic Alphabet
2009
Max Goldfarb
Alpha Bravo Charlie is an alphabet book: As much a systematic collection of drawings as it is an unusual learning book, Alpha bases its method of presenting the alphabet on the NATO standard for articulating letters as words, designed for accurate communication. The phonetic alphabet has been used in radio communications where sonic artifacts can distort important information. As a set of drawings, Alpha eschews conventional ‘A is for apple’ mnemonics to place the words learned in letter association into a broader cultural field including music, literature, film, sports, politics, etc:
Interest in the phonetic alphabet emerged from Goldfarb’s work in the radio medium. Goldfarb is an artist affiliated with free103point9 Transmission Arts, and is on the founding council of WGXC.org Community Media Project in upstate New York. He is also a licensed radio operator and member of the Amateur Radio Relay League, call sign KC2MIN.