Guest:

Absolute Value of Noise (Peter Courtemanche) is a sound artist living in Vancouver. He works with radio, sound installation, and electronics in indoor and outdoor locations. Since 1988, he has created many radio pieces that have been heard around the world on national radio stations, community radio, and temporary radio stations set up for arts festivals and radio-art events. He likes to work with "gadgetry" – bio-electric analog circuits, wire coils, magnetic transceivers, and "little electronic brains" that observe and respond to local phenomena. His outdoor installations typically integrate solar-powered electronics with plants. These works investigate themes of bio-diversity, extinction, and fragile eco-systems. They emphasize the invisible, drawing attention to things people normally overlook or avoid/dislike (insects, lichen, moss, weeds, pollution). Information on his work can be found at https://absolutevalueofnoise.ca

"unknown sounds" is intended as a radio archive of experimental artists’ interior worlds, these that are externalized through their work, and the interchange through artist communities. This is an contemporary archive of experimental art-making in communities around the world, the inherent politicism of art, and the social change this may or may not represent. In short, it is intended mostly as a look into these small worlds, with the idea of generating more thought on both human fallibility and potential, and how art can engender hope. Each section here is meant as a studio visit, but also a glimpse into the doings of a wider community and the cultural, political repercussions of experimental sound and art-making.

"unknown sounds" is produced by Elena Botts and organized by the unknown sound collective, an experimental international multimedia collective.

Elena Botts has lived many places in the northeast and abroad. Elena's poems and writings have been published in over a hundred literary and scholarly magazines. Elena has been the winner of four poetry contests and has had many books published. Elena's visual artwork has won numerous awards and has been exhibited in various galleries. Elena has collaborated on, released, and installed sound and moving image artwork, as well as multimedia and conceptual art, and has organized a multimedia collective for this purpose, while pursuing graduate school and academic, policy, and activist work and projects.