Black Seas is an ongoing body of work under the influence of historical and contemporary experiences of auditory hallucination. After scouring texts from modernist feminist writing to horror and weird literature, cognitive science studies, oral histories, 18th century psychic journals, colonial postcards and “post”-colonial critique, film and music influenced, or traumatized, by hallucination, sound and communications studies, religious tracts, philosophical threads, Situationist diatribes, studies on the psychology of solitary confinement, stories of lost and dying explorers, numerous sound, installation, video and transmission works have emerged.

In the month of March, 2018, Bates was working in Krems an-der-Donau, Austria preparing for a Black Seas Ensemble performance at the Minoriten Church. Over five evenings Bates also did a daily radio broadcast from his studio. Black Seas (Radius) is a reworking of the material broadcast over these sessions and includes feedback, wind noise from a fan, piano resonance, radio static, and production recordings from the church.