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Radio Mirror invites six New York-based sound artists of different creative backgrounds to share their visions and ideas on the theme of “Radio Arts Space” by contributing a work to the exhibition. How can radio resound through the cuts and clicks of vinyl records? Maria Chavez’s SOUND FX essentially brings that question to the foreground in an effort to recreate the sound effects of the golden age of radio. Radio embraces our private memory and sensory space whilst being present in the public realm. Aki Onda’s First Thought Best Thought shifts through spaces, ambiences and chance interactions in an effort to capture with a cassette recorder radio’s dual ethereal presence. Kabir Carter’s Fill challenges the listener by questioning how sound can survive between the air chain and the receiver while its signal propagates through space. Ed Bear and Lea Bertucci’s (aka TwistyCat) Secret Message System uses radio transmission as a tool to record and collage the voices of a group of young participants in a workshop on experimental radio transmission. Following the same line of unorthodox broadcasting, Zach Layton’s Pulsar Consciousness captures radio astronomy transmissions from Haruni Mirror Radio Telescope in Armenia and rebroadcasts them to space via a custom made MAX/MSP patch for brainwave signal manipulation. Another characteristic of the sound on radio can be its distant yet familiar, connection to its listener/receiver. Along these lines, the artist duo The Propagations’s The Bangalore Blowtorch sends us recordings of shortwave transmissions from Bangalore, India. To conclude, using their personal tools and approaches the participant artists in Radio Mirror aim to establish an open ended definition of what art on radio is or can be. Haunting, familiar, hilarious, mysterious, ethereal and challenging, Radio Mirror offers just a small, yet compelling, addition to the multifaceted spectrum of the “Radio Arts Space” exhibition.

- Maria Papadomanolaki