Absolute Value of Noise is the alias of artist Peter Courtemanche. In “Tapeloping,” which commemorates the 30th anniversary of the first Absolute Value of Noise show on Vancouver’s CITR-FM, Courtemanche used the generative audio mixing software that underpins many of his recent works to combine samples from 30 artists who have collaborated with him or otherwise provided inspiration in the past. In his description of the piece, Courtemanche asks us to imagine these audio contributions as tape loops that stretch out through the hallways of a radio studio, wrapping around mic stands and doorknobs on their way back to the mixing desk. “Tapeloping”’s semi-automated collage invites listeners into the center of Courtemanche’s decades-long practice where broadcast radio serves as a platform for exchange and experimentation among noise artists.

Contributing artists include: Deanne Achong, Jim Andrews, Sean Arden, Steve Bates, Gívan Belá, Ian Birse, John Brennan, Hank Bull, Brian Charles (a ghost in the machine), Don Chow, Andrea Cserenyi (from the archives), DinahBird, Elisa Ferrari, David Floren, Anna Friz, Ken Gregory, Steve Heimbecker, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Eileen Kage, Laura Kavanaugh, Gene Kosowan, Sally Ann McIntyre, Brady Marks, Faith Moosang, Bill Mullan, Jem Noble + Milo Piccini Noble, Roberto Paci Dalò, Anthony Roberts, Matt Rogalsky, Adam Sloan + Liam Sloan, Maia Urstad, Gregory Whitehead, Elisabeth Zimmermann. - Introduced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow 2021/2022, Andy Stuhl.

The Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive is an online resource and broadcast series on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM, which is syndicated to stations across the country through The Radio Art Hour. It aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM/Shortwave broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or pirate transmission. The archive is a product of Wave Farm's Radio Artist Fellowship.

Radio artists explore broadcast radio space through a richly polyphonous mix of practices, including poetic resuscitations of conventional radio drama, documentary, interview and news formats; found and field sound compositions reframed by broadcast; performative inhabitations/embodiments of radio’s inherent qualities, such as entropy, anonymity and interference; playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers, and the potential feedback loops between hosts and layers of audience, from in-studio to listeners at home to callers-in; use of radio space to bridge widely dispersed voices (be they living or dead), subjects, environments and communities, or to migrate through them in ways that would not be possible in real time and space; electroacoustic compositions with sounds primarily derived from gathering, generating and remixing radiophonic sources. Note: Wave Farm continues to expand this definition of radio art through engagement with contemporary practices including those revealed by Wave Farm Artists-in-residence, and the Radio Art Fellowship program.