The Radio as Collaborator workshop explored the possibilities of radio as an instrument, a score, and a conversation partner in the creative process. In two-sessions, participants worked on improvisation and score-making with the radio, including both solo making and group collaboration. Starting with a series of deep listening exercises, participants then took a series of recordings of radio, exploring intuitive making, response improvisation, and “signal sweeps”. Participants brought aspects of their own practices to the workshop, in the form of instrumental music, poetry, and engineering, to name a few.

The sessions, conducted via zoom, offered the opportunity to share radio content from different parts of the country and the world, highlighting the site-specificity of radio and the possibilities of collaboration between places as well as people. Sharing and discussing recordings became a conduit for sharing listening space, hearing through new ears via the radio. Each participant’s unique relationship with time, place, and listening was manifested in their unique relationship to their radio collaborator.

The workshop culminated in a creative commons of participant’s recordings, available for all to ‘remix’. Kohl’s own remix was broadcast on Wave Farm’s The Radio Art Hour.

These recordings were made by Greg Cerveny, Eve Cavanaugh, Jack Thompson, Ginebra Raventós, Michelle Kaplan, Jillian McDonald, Eric Theise, Stevie Jones, Anton Pickard, Dawood Nadurath, Cotter Luppi, Ed Woodham, Bob Drake, Veronica Anne Salinas, Eve Madalengoita, Winslow, and Lia Kohl as part of The Radio as Collaborator workshop, facilitated by Lia Kohl in conjunction with her Wave Farm Radio Art Fellowship in Fall 2023.