NSOTA is a radical experiment in alternative education, away from marketization and arcane specialism towards co-sensing systems change through creative practice.

This is an ecological transmission of DIY ethics, non-hierarchical structures, radical networks, interconnected sensing through sound, text, voice, spoken word, human and more-than-human collaborative practice, patchwork group thinking, and radio art.

This episode is created for the December solstice, a time of extreme dark or light in either direction, a hunkering down in the wet earth or a baking out in the hot sun. The piece is composed by Stephen Shiell using original material from NSOTA scholars.

Scholar contributions:

Stephen Shiell - with guests Rina and Laura
A piece created as part of Camp FR’s ‘Free Radio Pyrenees’ residency, including Stephen's field studies from Mount Agnes (Stephen P McGreavy BBB-4 VLF receiver), hydrophone recordings from the River Garbet and the town pond (David Rothenburg hydrophones), field recordings of a water viaduct (Lom Geofon), a duet with a thyme bush full of pollinators and a bullroarer, exploring the vibrations of this early transmission device, a nighttime thunderstorm (Lom Usi-Pro omni-directionals).

Rina sounded the ski lift using a geophone with personal interactions, and Laura mixed found sound from a tourists camping trip or the area, with voice and synth.

Rhona Eve Clews chats symbolic teeth, mouths, and lipstick dreams with artist friends, plays ukulele on Christmas eve, recalls a Fijian airport in December, and completes the solstice session with the OOO of fireworks in Montreal.

Stephen Shiell field recording of a pile of wood ants, Dartmoor.

Chris de Sel - ‘Cold War Autumn Regime’ - on a walk from Battersea to Blackfriars bridge, from angst about a climate crisis to a preoccupation with geopolitical power struggles. 

Sk.ye recites ‘an extract from ‘Notebook,’ a work in progress, and plays a clarinet rendition of a fragment of music composed by Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

Lu(Lu)Lu - ‘There was beauty to their strange distortion,’ a piece inspired by the shifting balance in darkness and light at this time of year.

Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White) - ‘We go on together,’ a melancholy lament for our times born of collective and personal grief.

Stephen Shiell - field recording of frogs, beetles, larvae, boatman, caddis fly, plant photosynthesis from a pond Saint-Aignan in France.

Clare Whistler recites her poem ’52 Accords’ from ‘Accord’ an Eco Body collective project.

Michael Timmerman creates a sonic space where technics, the world of insects, birds, rain, thunder, searching and fleeing human steps, and the poetry of Paul Celan interact in ways that is unlikely to provoke a unified response. The opening chord progression may be just that – a kind of hope for progress. But it is also melancholic. Unfinished. Not progressing, just fading. There is possibly also horror, dismay. The sax just repeats as if it could move on to a melody or something else uplifting. That initial note may be all we have.

Simon McClelland Morris - ‘Beating the Boundary’ is a sonic response to the idea of the parish boundary – a semi-fictitious territory that acted as a demarcation line for the church and head family in the parish, and a way of control and extraction from people within the boundary line

This radio show is a quarterly reflection of the global network of artists and thinkers gathered through the New School of the Anthropocene’s hybrid learning environment, a seasonal almanac-like montage of creative responses to the interdisciplinary thinking of the school and the discussions, collaborations and systems solutions being nurtured there.

The seasonal transmissions follow the sun-earth movements, each year beginning at the December solstice, moving through March equinox and June solstice and ending with September equinox.