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Transmission Ecologies: Episode 2 - Kristen Roos (Audio)
In this episode Afroditi Psarra invites Vancouver based artist and educator Kristen Roos, whose practice includes sound and radio art, site-specific installation, printmaking, textiles, and media archaeology. The mix he has prepared explores three of his projects that span 16 years of working with radio transmission and transmission art: The Micro Radio Project, Electrosmog, and Anti-Wave.
TRACKLIST
1. Echo Location/The Parking Lot Broadcast - collaborative sound project with Kristen Roos and Jackson Two Bears
This is a recording of a live performance from 2005 (Open Space, Victoria) that involved using sounds captured from downtown Victoria using cell phones and portable recording devices. This recording was broadcast in a parking lot on Store St. in Victoria, BC. Listeners were encouraged to arrive by car or foot and tune in on car radios or radios provided. It is also included in the Errant Bodies publication Radio Territories in 2007.
2. The Acoustic Commons - Kristen Roos
This audio collage metaphorically examines the issues explored at the Commons Conference, the commons and privatization, and reaches an audience at the very site that the audio was originally recorded (Victoria BC). In micro broadcasting this site-specific sound collage, I was using radio as a metaphor for the enclosure of the land, by temporarily creating a space on the airwaves that is an aural “commons” of sorts.The speakers that appear in this piece were originally recorded at the conference The Wars at Home, The Wars Abroad: Imperialism and the Everyday at the University of Victoria in 2005 - and appear chronologically - Chief Kim Recalma-Clutesi of the Qualicum Band, Richard Day, and Arthur Manuel (who recently passed away).
3.The Mall Broadcast - Kristen Roos
Recordings from a Mall in Victoria, BC in 2005. This audio collage was broadcast as a performance in the mall, which was shutdown by mall security. A description of this appears in my writing on my micro radio project in the New Star publication Islands of Resistance: Pirate Radio In Canada.
4. Electrosmog Radius: Grids Series, Chicago - Artist Residency for Radius, performance recorded in 2016.
Sounds were collected from an old coal power plant using High frequency receivers, a live performance using the sounds collected, live reception of frequencies, and microwaves ovens. Sounds were heard over a combination of small radios around the audience, and a sound system. There is an interview on this project that appears in the Radius Publication/zine Radius: Grids.
5. Anti-Wave: KunstRadio Residency, Vienna 2017.
This is the last track in the mix. It's a studio recording at Vienna Funkhause (Austrian Public Radio) for a project which uses high frequency receivers and utilizes the sounds they receive from wifi, bluetooth, cell towers, smart meters and cordless phones. This project was conceptualized during a Wave Farm Residency in upstate New York.
Curated by Afroditi Psarra, "Transmission Ecologies" explores the turbulent world of radio signals which propagate around us. Each show features a guest sound artist who broadcasts their radio experiments using EMFs, interference patterns from devices, HAM, RF field recordings, satellite signals, space astronomy research, etc. to formulate their interpretations, compositions, and translations of the invisible and unheard layer of telecommunication technologies.