In this workshop at the WGXC Catskill Studio, participants will assemble their own pocket sized Community Portal transmission instruments for ancestral play and communication, inspired by ghost boxes, electronic spirit communication, and water and listening-based knowledge practices across the artist Natan Diacon-Furtado’s own Quaker, Sephardic Jewish, West African, Native Brazilian, settler, arrivant, and Indigenous ancestries. Sounds and messages received through these instruments during the workshop will be recorded and broadcast on WGXC as a collaborative sound collage.

Participants will also learn about the pcb antenna designs that receive and transmit radio waves in most of the “smart” objects in our lives and use this new knowledge to design and make tarot and oracle inspired antennas for their own pocket portals.

The pocket portal instruments and the process for making oracle antennas has been designed in collaboration with Fun Stuff Design, an industrial design studio specialized in novel sustainable materials and sustainable product development. Participants will each receive a case designed by Fun Stuff Design and Natan Diacon-Furtado to protect their pocket portals on whatever journeys come next.

Workshop registration fee: $25
Materials fee: $45

Natan Diacon-Furtado (all pronouns) is a collaborative artist and designer of visionary engineering projects that expand notions of ancestry and self through play. Trained as an anthropologist and architect, they are currently a doctoral candidate in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, USA. They have been the subject of two solo museum shows, at the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre and Indiana University’s Wiley House Museum, with additional exhibitions at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Delft Architectural Biennial, and Buenos Aires Biennale of Architecture. In addition, their design work has been named one of the ‘World’s Greatest Places’ by TIME Magazine.

Julian Goldman is a designer and artist focused on the point at which novel technology and materials touch society. Dierdre Shea is an object designer with a background in ceramics, industrial design, novel materials, and the craft of manufacturing. She is interested in using her discipline to understand and develop meaningful, sustainable relationships between humans and products to reform and replace systems of mass production and material consumption.

WAVE FARM and WFMU and ARTxFM are teaming up to bring you a weekend focused on the creative and experimental nature of radio.

We invite fellow radio makers, station staff and volunteers, engineers, and enthusiasts to join us in Jersey City for performances, workshops, and conversations around experimental potentials of radio and the ways that creativity can serve our communities and listenership. FM, LPFM, and internet stations from across the East Coast and beyond are welcome.

SCHEDULE:

Friday November 13

1:00 PM 

Opening Reception

2:00 PM

Theremin Workshop with Dorit Chrysler

2:00 PM

Update on the FCC Translator Window and LPFM Allocations with Paul Bame 

3:00 PM

College Radio Meeting

5:00 PM

Raw Power: Radio Remotes for the Masses with ART FM / WXOX

5:00 PM

Radio as Collage: From Freeform Broadcasting to Spoken-Word with Vicki Bennet

7:00 PM

Tour of WFMU

8:00 PM

Performance/Demo: Demon Box

9:00 PM

Performance: Radio Wonderland (Joshua Fried)

9:30 PM

Performance: Laenz

Saturday November 14

9:30AM

Homemade Radio Theater with Hearty White

9:30 AM

The Collaborative Ecology of Radio with Wave Farm Co-Directors Bianca Felix Biberaj and Meredith Kooi

11:00 AM

Radio Is Not A Container with Anna Friz

1:30 PM

36 Years of Experimental Comedy with Andy Breckman and Ken

1:30 PM

Screening: 40 Watts From Nowhere (Documentary Film on Pirate Radio)

3:00 PM

Inductive Listening Workshop with Zach Poff

3:00 PM

Neon Icon: Syndicating Experimental Programming with WXOX

4:00 PM

The Children of The Waves of Africa with Babette Thomas

5:00 PM 

Audience Building with WFMU 

8:00 PM 

Negativland + SUE-C: Performance and Q&A

Sunday November 15

10:00 AM

All Together Now: Activating the EAS

10:00 AM

Supplemental Media

12:00 PM

Full Group Session: Looking to the Future

More information, full schedule and descriptions, and registration here!

This hands-on workshop explores soil as a medium for listening, transmission, and vibration. Participants will build simple soil microphones using piezoelectric contact microphones coupled to metal rods and plates, creating inexpensive instruments for hearing vibrations that travel through earth, plants, stones, roots, and other materials. We will also be building simple preamps for these microphones and exploring how electronics work.

Together, we will experiment with different forms of mechanical coupling, amplification, and resonance, including metal probes for listening at different depths and resonant plates that increase the surface area through which vibrations can be collected. Components will be protected with dipped latex coatings, allowing participants to experiment with temporary placement in soil and damp environments.

Alongside construction, the workshop introduces basic principles of contact microphones, impedance, vibration, amplification, and field recording. We will conclude by taking the microphones outside for a collective listening session, comparing how different materials, depths, and locations shape what can be heard. No previous electronics, soldering, or audio experience is required. Each participant will leave with a functioning soil microphone and preamp for continued experimentation and field recording.

Workshop registration fee: $25
Materials fee: $45
Click here to register!

ABOUT CHLOE ALEXANDRA THOMPSON
Chloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree interdisciplinary artist, composer, and creative technologist whose work approaches sound as a relational and embodied medium. Her practice moves between spatial audio, field recording, synthesis, installation, performance, and experimental technologies to investigate how listening can create relationships between bodies, environments, and technical systems.

Her work considers acoustic ecology alongside Indigenous approaches to listening, attending to vibration, resonance, and environmental sound as forms of knowledge that exceed language. Through installations and participatory listening situations, Thompson creates conditions for encountering sound not simply as representation, but as a material event moving through air, water, architecture, bodies, and land.

She is a current Onassis ONX Studio member and has participated in residencies and programs with Pioneer Works, Eyebeam, MIT Open Documentary Lab with the Indigenous Screen Office of Canada, HERVISIONS x Arebyte, and Yucca Valley Material Lab.