A broadcast of Radio Web MACBA (Barcelona)'s special Radioactivity #7 From Radio Web MACBA, "In his first piece using radio as a medium, artist, composer and researcher Edwin van der Heide created an immersive environment by making radio waves audible through custom-developed transmitters and handheld receivers. Radiospace opened up an almost-tangible sonic zone in the city, which audiences could navigate while mixing signals and incorporating change by modulating distortion, interference and loudness. Interacting with each of the 15 transmitters in the installation, participants explored a freshly unveiled layer of the city—a new sonic spatial reality.

Edwin van der Heide later teamed up with Jan-Peter Sonntag to experiment with “natural radio”: naturally occurring radio emissions produced by lightning, the interaction between the magnetosphere and the sun, and natural disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field.

In this broadcast, RWM talks with Edwin van der Heide about using radio as a way into the public, outside world, and about radio as a highly regulated space that sometimes resists experimentation. We discuss his early interest in short and medium wave radio and how it came to be expressed in these immersive, awe-inspiring installations, and we speculate about the production of meaning inherent in each of them. Learn more at rwm.macba.cat.