Tune in today for two pop songs with radio themes, and two mythic radio art works. Kate Donovan's "The Bespoke Headpiece" is a radio myth; one that is imagined to date back millennia. The story has travelled orally through generations of those who have lived in locations where the Aurora Borealis reveals itself, and where some women could not only see the illuminated sky, but could also hear the phenomenon. As part of a coming of age ritual, girls would spend three nights alone with the Aurora night sky, wearing custom headdresses fashioned as receiving antennas, constructed of natural materials and designed to amplify the reception of sound. Folklore tells of this rite of passage, where reception was so acutely tuned that the young women alone in the night could hear voices of the deceased and the unborn. It is said that these voices provided guidance and support as the girls began their journey into adulthood. After that Steve Roden's "transmissions (voices of objects and skies)" was created for the exhibition "Transmissions From Space" at the Fresno Metropolitan Museum in 2005. The work was inspired by John Glenn’s first transmission from space. The source material was recordings of satellites by amateur astronomers from the 1960’s through the 1980’s that Roden processed and transformed electronically. Opening and closing the show are two pop songs with radio themes. Spiritualized's "Always Together With You" from the 2022 album "Everything Was Beautiful" opens the show. The band Glove's "Radio Out," from the 2022 album "Boom Nights," takes us out.

Welcome to "The Radio Art Hour," a show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio. "The Radio Art Hour" draws from the Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive, an online resource that aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks made by artists around the world, created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or independent transmission. Come on a journey with us as radio artists explore broadcast radio space through poetic resuscitations and playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers in this hour of radio about radio as an art form. "The Radio Art Hour" features introductions from Philip Grant and Tom Roe, and from Wave Farm Radio Art Fellows Karen Werner, Jess Speer, and Andy Stuhl. The Conet Project's recordings of numbers radio stations serve as interstitial sounds. Go to wavefarm.org for more information about "The Radio Art Hour" and Wave Farm's Radio Art Archive.