WGXC-90.7 FM
Radia: Forgotten Loops by Roberto D'Ugo Junior (radioart106)
90.7-FM in NY's Upper Hudson Valley and wgxc.org/listen everywhere
http://www.wgxc.org/
Forgotten Loops by Roberto D'Ugo Junior (radioart106). image provided by Radia (Oct 02, 2025)
Produced by a different "Radia" station each week.
Roberto D'Ugo Junior is a brazilian artist-researcher dedicated to radio art. His work explores interfaces between magic, technique and art. Based on a poetic-documentary listening to everyday life, he develops an aesthetic investigation that dialogues with surrealism and musical minimalism. One of the main features of his work is the ritualistic repetition of speech residues and fragments of field recordings. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the Institute of Arts at São Paulo State University. He was programme and production coordinator at Rádio Cultura FM in São Paulo. He teaches radio and sound media at the Faculdade Cásper Líbero.
01. Forgotten Loops’ Sketchbook, 2023-2024 (00:17:06)
Life is a beautiful glitch. A rhythmic essay on our flaws and imperfections. An infinite list of small mistakes and forgetfulness that swirl and thicken in the mind of the poet, a sound artist. Beckettian anti-resolutions that emerge like a litany during a brief meditation on everyday life. The author's poem, presented by means of a superimposition of vocal lines made up of loops with different psychological framings of the text. Simultaneities. The irregularity of the loops used in the piece, the result of sudden gestures of improvisation on the recorded material, results in an approximation to the technical precariousness of sillon fermé, the closed groove inscribed on old acetate discs. Cuts and overlaps animate the resulting patterns. The piece is made up of three parts: parts 1 and 3, fast and essentially rhythmic. Part 2, broader, slower and cumulative; semi-discursive, punctuated by hesitations and squeaks. Voice: Anna Carl Lucchese.
02. Children of Science, 2021 (17:07-18:07)
October, 2020. São Paulo. Three friends in a public park, wearing masks. They talk about life from a safe distance. Shy walkers pass. Children appear. They get on the spinning toy. At a safe distance, they articulate the present. Figure and background. Our anguish exposed to the sun. The pile driver lacks empathy. At night, alone, I listen to what they said: imaginary friends, little magic stones, trips to the Moon and Saturn! "The most dangerous thing in the world? Jump out of a Building. Second, catch the Corona virus." Children of science, they are. Voice: Roberto D’Ugo Junior.
03. Fica Comovido / Be Moved By (final section), 2021-2022 (18:07-27:07)
Mr Laurentino is a street musician who used to play his harmonica on the pavement of Avenida Paulista in the city of São Paulo. One evening in 2018, I conducted a short interview with him. When asked how passers-by reacted to his work, he simply said that everyone is moved when they hear music. I hadn't seen Mr Laurentino for a long time. In this piece (2021), the phrase 'Fica comovido' (be moved by) is subjected to basic electroacoustic processing: slowdown, EQ, granular delay and exhaustive repetition. The irregularity of the loops, the fruit of sudden gestures of improvisation, results in an approximation to the technical precariousness of sillon fermé, the closed groove inscribed on old acetate discs. Repetitions, cuts and overlaps animate 'resulting patterns'. At the end, I thank the musician, a little awkwardly, for the conversation before I leave. The 45 minutes are derived from a simple phrase said by Mr Laurentino as if he were apologising for something. This piece is neither a report nor a documentary, but a modest audio testimony and a poetic meditation on the human condition.
https://soundcloud.com/user-48062083-271779683
https://www.instagram.com/d_ugo_minimal_radio/>/a>
Each week one member of the Radia Network produces a show for all the others. The Radia Network emerged from a series of meetings, clandestine events, late-night club discussions, and a lot of email exchanges between cultural radio producers across Europe. The topics vary and the reasons for forming a network are many, but Radia has become a concrete manifestation of the desire to use radio as an art form. The approaches differ, as do the local contexts; from commissioned radio art works to struggles for frequencies to copyright concerns, all the radios share the goal of an audio space where something different can happen. That different is also a form in the making––radio sounds different in each city, on each frequency. Taking radio as an art form, claiming that space for creative production in the mediascape and cracking apart the notion of radio, is what Radia does.
It is producing radio stuff that is hard to describe. Some of it can be labeled radio art, or experimental radio, or creative radio. Sometimes it talks, sometimes it doesn’t. It can be noisy, or a kind of soundscape, or a documentary, a document, a talk, a performance. Each and every week, one of the partners will provide the network program, commissioned and produced especially for this purpose: being broadcast by all the partners and made available online.
Some things have to be said about all those partners. They are radio stations, of the independent, non-commercial, community, cultural species. They all speak different languages, and this should create interesting problems. Although initially they were all European radio stations this has changed over time, and Radia has become not only larger but also more diverse: 22 partners in 14 countries and growing all the time.
Radia Stations
* Duuu (Paris, FR)
* ∏node (Mulhouse, Paris, FR)
* Diffusion (Sydney, AU)
* JET FM (Nantes, FR)
* Kanal 103 (Skopje, MK)
* Orange 94.0 (Vienna, AT)
* Radio Campus (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Grenouille (Marseille, FR)
* Radio Helsinki (Graz, AT)
* Radio One 91 FM (Dunedin, NZ)
* Radio Panik (Brussels, BE)
* Radio Papesse (Firenze, IT)
* Radio Student (Ljubljana, SI)
* radio x (Frankfurt/Main, DE)
* Rádio Zero (Lisboa, PT)
* RadioWORM (Rotterdam, NL)
* Reboot.fm (Berlin, DE)
* Resonance FM (London, UK)
* Soundart Radio (Dartington, UK)
* TEA FM (Zaragoza, ES)
* Usmaradio (San Marino, SM)
* Wave Farm WGXC 90.7-FM (New York, USA)
Affiliates
* Kunstradio (Vienna, AT)
* Mobile Radio (Ürzig, DE)
* Radioart106 (Haifa, PS48)
More information at http://radia.fm