September 9, 2009
free103point9 Special Announcement

AIRTIME FELLOWS:

free103point9 is pleased to announce the 2009/2010 AIRtime Fellowship recipients:

Brett Ian Balogh (Chicago, IL), Noospherium
Sabine Gruffat & Bill Brown (Madison, WI), The Bike Box
Zach Poff (Brooklyn, NY), Radio Silence

The AIRtime Fellowship program provides artists (individuals and/or collectives) with valuable assistance with which to concentrate on new transmission works and conduct research about the Transmission Art genre using free103point9's resource library and equipment holdings. “Transmission Arts” is defined as a multiplicity of practices and media, where the intentional use of space (often the airwaves) to convey content and or ideas is a critical and conceptual underpinning for the work. Transmission works often employ the physical properties of the electromagnetic spectrum and manifest themselves in participatory live art or time-based art, and include, but are not limited to, radio, video, light, installation, and performance.

free103point9 AIRtime Fellows present their work in conjunction with WGXC: Hands On Radio, in upstate New York, and free103point9 city-based programs at the Ontological Theater at St. Mark's Church in Manhattan. Fellows receive an honorarium of $1,000, and technical and administrative support from free103point9 staff.

About the selected artists and projects:

Brett Ian Balogh (Chicago, IL), Noospherium
Brett Ian Balogh is an artist working at the intersection of objects, sounds and spaces. His current practice employs sound, radio and digital fabrication technologies to re-imagine traditional notions of space and our placement within. Balogh’s AIRtime project, Noospherium will manifest as an array of radio receivers installed throughout an exhibition space as points of sound diffusion accompanied by a video projection. Audio samples will be taken from various portions of the radio spectrum and rebroadcast via low-power FM by a programmable wide-band transceiver developed by Balogh. A computer application written in Max/MSP will control the sampling and rebroadcast of the received signals as well as animate the audio across the array of receivers, endowing the resulting soundscape with motion within the space. The video projection will consist of computer-animated representations of broadcast coverage areas derived from data available from the FCC relevant to the geographic location of the venue. This project aims to unite the DIY spirit of both the radio and open-source communities by advancing a low-cost, user-friendly, programmable, and extensible transmission arts platform, which will be made available to others.

Sabine Gruffat & Bill Brown (Madison, WI), The Bike Box
Sabine Gruffat is an interdisciplinary artist whose work maneuvers through, manipulates, and challenges prescribed genres and codes. Bill Brown seeks to correlate geographical coordinates with conceptual ones in his work, such as uncovering the memories and histories folded up inside physical landscapes and borders. Their collaborative AIRtime project, The Bike Box, is grounded in the artists’ interest in site-specific art and interactive media. The Bike Box will give an area’s residents access to cheap, durable, technology-enhanced bicycles in order to assist and encourage the exploration and interpretation of their environment. Bicycles at The Bike Box will be equipped with a GPS receiver/transmitter that may be connected to each user’s mobile phone. As cyclists pedal through the streets, their GPS coordinates will be beamed to a central computer and their positions will be displayed on a screen at The Bike Box receiving station. When cyclists pass through certain pre-selected GPS coordinates, their cell phones will ring, allowing them to listen to a pre-recorded description of the location informed by local land-use experts, historians, poets, and other interpreters.

Zach Poff (Brooklyn, NY), Radio Silence
Through artwork, teaching, and free software creation, Zach Poff examines the opportunities and challenges that arise from the translation of our experiences into "information." His recent work has been focused on how traditional broadcasting reverberates into digital media and influences notions of an emerging post-broadcast discourse. Poff’s AIRtime project, Radio Silence, explores the silent moments of talk-radio, using the cadences of different live radio personalities to compose an ongoing collaborative “performance.” Eight radio tuners feed their signals into custom software that will detect each silent moment and replace it with a unique “note.” Each note is a spectral average of the source audio, so it reflects the timbre of whatever is currently on the air. The speakers are arranged in a row above a computer display, which shows a “waterfall” visualization of the recent silences of each program and the call-letters of each station. The result is a multichannel composition of abstract bursts that inherit specific human rhythms from the rhetoric of their sources.

For more information see: http://www.free103point9.org/apply/airtime/

THE PROVENANCE OF BEAUTY: A SOUND BRONX TRAVELOGUE
The Foundry Theater's poetic travelogue performed on a bus touring the South Bronx, with transmission and technical support from free103point9.

Weekends. September 5 – October 25, 2009

The Provenance of Beauty is a poetic travelogue performed on a bus touring the South Bronx. As we travel the streets of the neighborhood, Rankine's evocative text points out and reflects upon the sites that pass by outside the windows. Views that to an outsider might go by unnoticed - a factory dressed up as townhouses, the theatre where La Lupe held court that is now a church - complicated places that ask what creates a neighborhood in a city in a country in the world.

The audience boards the bus in Spanish Harlem, puts on headphones and for 90 minutes eavesdrops on the voice - both live and recorded - of this historic place. Provenance is an experience that both responds to and redoubles the landscape - its sites, history, present and future - mapping out a poetic cartography of a neighborhood - of any neighborhood - in its eternal state of evolution. Two performances daily: every Sat & Sun from Sept 5 – Oct 25th (plus two shows on Labor Day 9/7) Click here for tickets. The bus leaves from & returns to Spanish Harlem (136 E. 121st St. btw. Lexington & 3rd Avenues) The performance runs approximately 90 minutes.

The Provenance of Beauty; A South Bronx Travelogue: written by Claudia Rankine; Created by Melanie Joseph & Claudia Rankine; Directed by Melanie Joseph & Shawn Sides. With Sarah Hayon and recorded performances by Raul Castillo & Randy Danson. Sound by Geoff Abbas; video by Kell Condon; production stage managed by Casey Llewellyn; bus driven by Mary Wallace. Special thanks to free103point9, for transmission and technical support.

For more information see: http://free103point9.org/events/2181/
THE NY ART BOOK FAIR
This year, free103point9 will celebrate our Transmission Arts contribution to PAJ A Journal of Performance and Art (Edited by Bonnie Marranca, MIT Press) with two special events on Saturday, October 3, 2009.

P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
22-25 Jackson Ave
at the intersection of 46th Ave
Long Island City, NY 11101
United States

free103point9 is once again delighted to be an invited participant of Friendly Fire at Printed Matter's NY Art Book Fair. This year, free103point9 will celebrate our Transmission Arts contribution to PAJ A Journal of Performance and Art (Edited by Bonnie Marranca, MIT Press) with two special events on Saturday, October 3, 2009.

2-3 p.m. Journal Signing: Contributors to this 22-page feature will be present to sign copies of PAJ 93.

3-4 p.m. Performances: Transmission-based sound performances from Brett Ian Balogh (radiophonic landscapes created by interleaving multiple broadcasts in a live, improvised performance) and Tarikh Korula.

As always, free103point9 Dispatch Series releases will be available. Other featured works at the free103point9 table will include: Brett Ian Balogh's A Noospheric Atlas of the United States (2009); Max Goldfarb's ALPHA BRAVO CHARLIE: The Phonetic Alphabet; LoVid's 486 Shorts (2008 LikeLike / Analogous Projects); Joe Milutis's The Torrent; Zach Poff's Enchanted; photographs from David la Spina; and more.

The NY Art Book Fair is Printed Matter's annual fair of contemporary art books, art catalogs, artists' books, art periodicals, and 'zines offered for sale by over 150 international publishers, booksellers, and antiquarian dealers. Admission to the fair is free. Visit the link below for up-to-date details about the fair, Thursday night preview, and benefit party.