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This month's Radiophrenia works include "NM SK" by Sisters Akousmatica and "Dead Language Poetry" by Espen Sommer Eide

Julia Drouhin and Phillipa Stafford, as Sisters Akousmatica, investigate mysterious radio broadcasts known as “the Silent Key”. "NM SK": drag the dial across frequencies at any given time, any given place and you will hear a cacophony of sounds. Static, pops and crackles, whistles, the tap, tap tap of the world and the universe going about its electromagnetic business. In between those sounds are stations: broadcasts that are music, news, chatter, cryptic messages and espionage. Stretching out around the world in a network of terrestrial communication, bouncing off the heaviside and landing back again to be collected by radio-listeners – in cars and in kitchens. Sisters Akousmatica are always listening – seeking out the strange broadcasts destined for…? Well, who knows. NM, SK begins to examine some of the recordings they have made in their quest to research “the silent key” – a series of broadcast messages that they discovered in the winter of 2017.

"Dead Language Poetry" by Espen Sommer Eide: Every tenth day a language disappears, and at that rate, within a few generations, half of the approximately 6000 languages in the world today will be extinct. What we lose when a language dies is a complex topic which is interesting from both a cultural historical, linguistic and philosophical point of view. With a background in art, music and philosophy, Norwegian sound artist Espen Sommer Eide has used numerous approaches to observe the phenomenon. He is interested in the complexity in the process behind destruction, evolution and creation of language.

In the performance Dead Language Poetry this subject is treated from an aesthetic perspective. Is it possible to find a unique signature of sound in different languages, and can such an aesthetic aspect be detached from the aspects of knowledge and identity? What is the sound of dead languages, and can it be revived? When Edison invented the phonograph, it was soon seen as a means, not primarily to play music, but to hear voices of dead persons. The voices recorded on the phonograph were experienced as sounds without bodies; as spirits in space. Through deconstructions of language Sommer Eide touches questions about the lines between living and dead languages, between meaning and sound, and between linguistic metaphorical structures and musically structured sound.

Recorded live at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow in November, 2017.