This week we hear from Chicago-based radio artist Lia Kohl, from the Bay Area's Negativland, and the krautrock band Can. Lia Kohl's "Variations on a Topography" is constructed in stratified layers, each containing a recording of a full scan of the AM/FM spectrum from bottom to top and back down again. Tuning through the spectrum in the same place every time, Kohl charts a map of her specific signal, showcasing the geographic specificity of radio and drawing out its topography with additional musical sounds. Cello and synthesizer highlight moments of clarity and static, creating a counterpoint ruled by the dichotomy between them. These “signal sweeps” also offer a sedimentary view of time, capturing multiple 28 minute sections of what would otherwise be completely ephemeral sounds. The recordings, taken over the span of a few months, speak in various ways to the passage of time – the weather gets colder, traffic patterns shift, wars break out. The signal, like a ghostly mountain range, hovers around us. Then tune in "Time Zones" by Negativland (1987), introduced by Jason Geistweidt. The experimental sound collective, Negativland, has been deconstructing media since its inception in the late 1970s. Originally comprised of members Mark Hosler, Richard Lyons, David Wills, Chris Grigg, and Don Joyce, Negativland makes an art of dissecting the sounds and images of mass media, reconstructing and recontextualizing these materials to reveal the hidden messages within. As Lyons notes in an interview with Rolling Stone, “I spend more time in thrift stores than anyone. I like to collect a lot of old records, spoken word records, and we all collect tapes. Don spends more time recording stuff off TV and radio.” Their breakthrough album, Escape from Noise, released in 1987 is both a commentary and a shout back at the sheer volume of media (radio, television, and print) that overwhelms our senses, a noise so pervasive that we passively accept its message. The media theorist Marshall McLuhan was fond of telling the story of two young fish swimming past an older fish. The older fish asks, “How’s the water boys?” and goes on his way. A few minutes later, perplexed, one fish looks at the other and asks, “What the hell is water?” Through the collection, manipulation, and juxtaposition of materials lifted from the media landscape, Negativland sheds a light on the deluge of media in which we find ourselves submerged. One cut in particular which provides a bit of clarity is Time Zones, a collage of diverse elements combining documentary voice overs, shortwave radio broadcasts, amateur radio conversations, automated time beacons, and talk radio call-in programming. From this mix arises the zeitgeist of the 1980s: fear of the Soviet Union, American exceptionalism, the militant standardization of time, the fetish of technology, and a somewhat Freudian preoccupation with size. - Introduced by Jason Geistweidt. The show ends with "Drink It Up" and "More Data" from Negativland, and then the song "Negativland" by the band Can.

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, Andy Stuhll, José Alejandro Rivera, Tyler Maxin, and Iru Ekpunobi. 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.