As artists and researchers who are invested in the radio spectrum, our work moves with fields of energy in the atmosphere, but it is also bound to the land, connected to rock, water, and life of all kinds. The energetic forces of radio require a deeper and more explicit partnership with the Earth.

Our Confluence aims to expand our understanding of the interrelations between radio art, space, place and fieldwork, and the associated kinships of listening and performing that deepen our understanding of ecological art. These events are part of a new partnership between Southern Illinois University and Northwestern University that has been established with the aim of exploring the intersections of sound art, radio art, ecological thought, and natural spaces. We are excited to partner with SIUC’s Touch of Nature, one of the nation’s first experiential outdoor educational programs. Additional partners include Artspace 304, Carbondale, Illinois regionally-based arts organization; Wave Farm/WGXC 90.7-FM, our national broadcasting partner in New York State; and GLASS, the Great Lakes Association for Sound Studies, a Midwestern consortium dedicated to the advancement of sound studies.

The theme for this Confluence is Seed Radio, which is derived from the work of our featured artist, Anna Friz. In a 2021 essay entitled “Of broadcasting (A radio wave is a space time traveler),” Friz evokes the humble seed as a metaphor for radio’s mobility – “Like seeds blown in the wind… airwaves tend to flow over the maps rather than be contained by them” – for radio’s wide-ranging address to diverse listeners – “Is a seed understood to carry the same longings as an unheard radio signal, broadly cast but most likely fated to fall on barren ground? Radiophonic longings ask, who's there, is anyone listening, especially the beloved hoped-for listener?” – and to radio’s potential relationship with the Earth – “an electromagnetic field is a field of influence. A field is a space cleared of trees or architecture… a field is a space for seeds to gather and grow.” This metaphoric convergence of seed and radio serves as a prompt for new work in radio/transmission art and presentations of new research in sound studies.

Schedule (Eastern Times)

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Seed Radio Workshop/Performance

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Panel Session: The Confluence of Radio, Space, and Place

Anna Friz and Jeff Kolar: Place Multiplied Working together and solo, we have engaged in temporary and site-specific radio interventions to rethink notions of listening, distance, and transmission ecologies, guided by an ethos of listening for rather than sending to. How can experiments with radio space bring us into embodied relationships with place?

Jacob Smith: Seed Radio Abductions Departing from Anna Friz’s essay, “A radio wave is a space time traveler.” Smith will harmonize Friz’s essay with a conceptual framework taken from Gregory Bateson’s ecology of mind and extend it across several vectors, some of which align with Smith’s own recent research.

Galen Joseph-Hunter Wave Farm: 25-years of Transmission From a microcasting collective formed in Brooklyn, NY, to a robust non-profit arts organization in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley with a full-power creative community radio station and installations situated on 29-acres, Wave Farm has cultivated artists’ experimentation with broadcast media and the airwaves for 25 years. At Seed Radio, Executive Director, Galen Joseph-Hunter will revisit Wave Farm’s origin story and its progression, with an emphasis on the site-specific installations in Acra, NY that activate the environment to reveal what is otherwise unheard and unseen.

Allen Moore: I am not your DJ A history of my practice, referencing influences from popular culture, Afrofuturism, and the importance of tinkering.

Stephan Moore: Sonic Innovations- A Caramoor Sound Art Update Every year since 2014, the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in upstate NY has been the site of an exhibition of outdoor, site-responsive sound art, now called Sonic Innovations. In my talk I'll discuss the transition to an annual event structure, the new work that has been commissioned, and the impact of sound art's presence on this longstanding summer music festival.

4:30pm -5:15 p.m. Radio Art performance: SLO Trail

A live performance by The SLO Radio Collective that utilizes the trails of Touch of Nature as a corridor for experiencing radio art. The performance explores the relationship between the personal and age-old act of walking in the woods with composed encounters of sound that consider ambulatory participation, site specificity and ecological thought. The SLO Radio Collective are: Andrew Bekye, John -Michael Veach, Cody Tracy, and Tyler Horn.

8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. Seed Radio Performance:

Live radio art, experimental sound creation, sounds from the springtime woods, Little Grassy Lake and more. Featured artists: Anna Friz, Jeff Kolar, Stephan Moore, Allen Moore and Jay Needham