U.S. House Commerce Committee oversight April 19 hearing "Deciphering the Debate Over Encryption."

Click here to download or play an audio version of this report.

Last week a "60 Minutes" report had a security expert hack a Congressperson's cell phone by just using his public ten-digit phone number. Karsten Nohl of Germany-based Security Research Labs was able to record audio of calls made to or from the California Rep. Ted Lieu's phone. The "60 Minutes" report with the Congressman's cooperation was meant to show that hackers could use the same well-known Signalling System No. 7 flaw to access anyone's phone through their phone number. SS7 allows different networks to communicate, and Lieu complains that security officials have long known that if any one of the 820 or so telcos have been hacked, then all are vulnerable to this sort of attack. Security officials, he says, let the flaw go as they also sometimes use it to track suspects. "The people who knew about this flaw should be fired," he said. "You cannot have 300 and some million Americans, and really the global citizenry, be at risk of having their phone conversations intercepted with a known flaw simply because some intelligence agencies might get some data. That is not acceptable."

Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica reports that The U.S. House of Representatives voted largely on party lines 241-173 April 15 to gut the Federal Communications Commission's authority to regulate Internet providers. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says the "No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act" bill could prevent the FCC from enforcing net neutrality rules against blocking and throttling. Republicans continue to insist, despite all proof, that the FCC's vote last year to reclassify Internet providers as common carriers and enforce net neutrality rules would require traditional rate regulation for broadband. But, Republicans say, we can tell the Democrats want to tax the Internet, even if they say otherwise. U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) told the Associated Press April 15, "We all know that what they'd like to do is regulate the Internet so they can tax the Internet, so they could then come in and set all the rates." Free Press Action Fund Policy Director Matt Wood said April 15, “Don’t believe a word the House Majority leadership says about this bill. It’s really about giving massive broadband providers the ability to gouge Internet users with impunity." The White House says President Obama will veto the bill if it passes the Senate. Read the full story at Ars Technica.

The Felice Brothers, "Aerosol Ball" from "Life In The Dark"



Performance by Bard Percussion on November 20, 2015 at the Bard College Conservatory of Music of "Aurél Holló: José / beFORe JOHN 5"



Tim Hecker, "Black Phase" from "Love Streams" (4AD)



Greg Saunier, "Adam+Eve Connection" from "Deerhoof Chamber Variations"



Pyrrhon, "Statistic Singular" from Running Out Of Skin

Click here to download or play an audio version of this report.

The Guardian reports that the sixth circuit court of appeals ruled April 12 that warrantless collection of cellphone location records is constitutional in the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union said in a brief that the location tracking in the case revealed the “extraordinary private details” police obtain through location tracking, down to where the defendants may worship and who they may be sleeping with. But the court said that the defendant's carrying a cell phone around gave them “no expectation of privacy” for location information, emphasizing that the records, “say nothing about the content of any calls.” The ACLU reported that the phone records included nearly 13,000 separate location points for one defendant, and more than 23,000 for the other, for an average of one every six minutes. Defense lawyers have not said if they will appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Read the full story in The Guardian.

NBC News reports that there's Wi-Fi on more than one-third of available flights worldwide, with around 60 airlines offering the service. But only six percent of flights have Wi-Fi as strong as home broadband service. So now users pay a lot for not much service. That's about to change. Inmarsat's Global Express network for aviation now has three satellites in service, and U.S.-based rival Viasat is launching two high-powered satellites that it says will significantly improve broadband speeds next year. After American Airlines threatened to switch to Viaset, it's company Gogo signed a deal with satellite operator SES to provide extra capacity. See the full story at NBC News.

The Washington Post reported April 12 that hackers the FBI hired opened the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone, ending the recent court standoff between Apple and the Justice Department. Hackers discovered a previously unknown software flaw, allowing the FBI to create hardware to crack the iPhone’s password without erasing all the data on the phone. Disabling a feature on the phone that erases data after 10 incorrect guesses at the code. A few reports earlier claimed the Israeli firm Cellebrite solved the phone, but The Washington Post story says that was not true. Cellebrite is developing a thumb drive-sized device for police to plug into phones at car accident scenes to tell if drivers were texting at the time of the crash. The U.S. government has not said whether information about the flaw will be shared with Apple. The computer company said last week that it would not sue the government for the solution. Previously, White House staff have spoken positively about disclosing computer flaws. “When we discover these vulnerabilities, there’s a very strong bias towards disclosure,” White House cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel said in an October 2014 interview, not about the Apple case. “That’s for a good reason. If you had to pick the economy and the government that is most dependent on a digital infrastructure, that would be the United States.” Read the full story in The Washington Post.

Sam Thielman in The Guardian reports that New York State Senator Terrence Murphy and Assemblyperson Felix Ortiz want police to be allowed to search any phone or portable device at the scene of a traffic accident. They got the idea as an Israeli company called Cellebrite is marketing a device called a “textalyzer” that analyzes a driver’s phone for police. “Any person who operates a motor vehicle in this state shall be deemed to have given consent to field testing of his or her mobile telephone and/or portable electronic device for the purpose of determining the use thereof while operating a motor vehicle provided that such testing is conducted by or at the direction of a police officer, after such person has operated a motor vehicle involved in an accident or collision involving damage to real or personal property, personal injury or death,” their proposed legislation says. Like someone refusing a breathalyzer, refusing to turn over a phone would cost one their license. The bill is also backed by activist group Distracted Operators Risk Casualties, founded by parents of children involved in crashes caused by drivers distracted by their devices. Read the full story in The Guardian.

Radio Insight reports that two radio stations in the western United States had their signals taken over by illegal transmissions last week, with the pirates forcing a sexually explicit podcast about love between folks dressed as furry characters on the FM signals. KIFT, a Top 40 radio station in Breckenridge, Colorado, and KXAX, a Texas country music station, aired the Furcast podcast, with the pirates hacking into the Studio Transmitter Links to the stations. Both stations used a "Barix Box" Studio Transmitter Link, which the pirates took over. The Alabama Broadcasters Association said in an Advisory. "In at least two cases six-character passwords were cracked." KIFT released this statement:

"In regards to our station KIFT this morning, what we know at this time is that a Studio Transmitter Link for our station, which is Internet-enabled, was hacked earlier today. For approximately an hour and a half, programming from a podcast unrelated to our normal programming was broadcast on a booster of KIFT. The main signal of KIFT was not affected, but the booster station was broadcasting the podcast programming, some of which was inappropriate for broadcast use. Our station was unable to regain control over the STL until the station engineer actually traveled to the remote transmitter site, and reprogrammed the system from that location. We use industry standard closed systems for our STL and are unsure how this was able to happen. We are working with equipment manufacturers and auditing the security of our own systems to avoid any repeats of this incident. Unfortunately, we live in a day and age where hacking is becoming and increasingly bigger problem. We would urge other broadcast outlets to be aware of the possibilities and to take precautions. We sincerely apologize for to our listeners for the content of the broadcast and are doing everything possible to ensure that is doesn’t happen again."

Barix Boxes are commonly used by low-power FM stations to send their audio over the internet from studio to transmitter locations (WGXC uses a similar Comrex Box between Hudson and Acra studios). Barix, the manufacturer of the hacked Studio Transmitter Link gear, released this statement:

"Barix has been made aware of reported incidents where Barix devices have been hijacked to broadcast unauthorized content. We deplore these attacks. Barix would like to emphasize that its devices are secure for Broadcast use when set up correctly and protected with a strong password. With several hundreds of thousands of Barix devices in operation worldwide, these unfortunate security breaches are an extreme rarity. The problem rests with securing things on the Internet in general. By checking one of the named listing sites, significant numbers of Internet-connected devices of all types and brands can be found. These devices are easily accessible if not properly protected. Barix streaming devices support the highest security levels with 24-character password protection. However, attacks are made easier if this password is not used and changed regularly."

There have been no claims of responsibility for the pirate transmissions.

George Coleman "A Master Speaks"



Bunnybrains, "Wish Snow Was Here (on top of th roof)" EP



Zemi17, "Zipper EP" (The Bunker New York 017)



TV Girl, "Benny and the Jetts"



AJ Cornell and Tim Darcy, "Too Significant to Ignore (Big Black Bowl)" (NNA Tapes)

Jason Martin who leads the Power Animal System, is a Troy-based musician with a new record "Methods" coming out with a release show April 16 at The Low Beat in Albany. Martin called in to the "WGXC Morning Show" April 8 with stories, and this clip also includes his songs "Network," "Please Assist Us With Transmission," "Dog Man," and "She Got Power."

Click here to download or play the full interview with music. (27:32)

Click here to download or play an audio version of this report.

Business Insider reports that Apple has a patent for technology that automatically scans songs streaming online to edit out any swear words in the lyrics. The patent, named "Management, Replacement and Removal of Explicit Lyrics during Audio Playback" was filed by Apple in September 2014, according to Business Insider, which says Apple could replace so-called swear words with a beeping noise, or with non-explicit lyrics on streaming music or in audio books. Apple's Beats 1 online radio station already only plays non-explicit edits of songs. The patent does not explain if the technology could be used by other groups, such as governments, to change political messages in songs or stories.

- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -
DATE: April 5, 2016
CONTACT: Galen Joseph-Hunter, Executive Director, galen@wavefarm.org (518-622-2598)

Ten Artists Announced for Residencies at Wave Farm in Acra, NY

Acra, NY— Wave Farm announced today the ten artists and projects selected for the 2016 Wave Farm Residency Program. Each artist will live and work on-site at the Wave Farm Study Center for ten days during the residency season, which spans May through October.

The Wave Farm Residency program provides artists with a valuable opportunity to concentrate on new transmission works and conduct research about the genre using the Wave Farm Study Center resource library. In conjunction with their residencies, artists perform, are interviewed, and create playlists for broadcast on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM, a creative community radio station serving over 78,000 potential listeners in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley, and international listeners online.

Wave Farm Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter said, “This year, an impressive pool of applications was received from nine countries and thirteen U.S. states. Artists making work with and about the airwaves, is what transmission art is all about. These projects experiment with the radio spectrum, reinvent radio theatre, or use transmission in performance, composition, and installation. The Wave Farm Residency program occupies an important place in this dynamic field internationally, and we are excited by the growth, interest, and support the Wave Farm Residency Program continues to experience.”

2016 Wave Farm Residency Program Selected Artists and Projects:

• C Lavender (Hudson, NY)
The Wave Farm Residency Program is pleased to welcome C. Lavender (Hudson, NY). Her "Circadian Rhythm Radio" seeks to reintegrate radio as a part of the sleep/wake cycle. By utilizing pure audio frequencies known as "isochronic tones" which manipulate brain wave states through the method of "brainwave entrainment," she will create a piece which slowly wakes the listener up in the morning as well as helping them relax and eventually fall asleep at night.

Isochronic tones are rapidly pulsing tones which sound alarming on their own and are usually hidden under other soothing audio recordings. "Circadian Rhythm Radio" will utilize live radio static also known as white noise and the live audio feed from the grounds of Wave Farm to create a relaxing soundscape which the isochronic tones will be "hidden" under. This project seeks to assist those who suffer with insomnia, circadian rhythm issues, disturbing noise pollution, and other factors which keep them from falling asleep and waking up at a proper time for them to fully function during the day.

C. Lavender is a Hudson Valley, New York based sound artist, educator, and healer whose work spans through live performance, recording, installations and workshops. Her productions are drawn from an intuitive place where there is a reverence for the delicate interplay between chance-based experimentation and rigid composition. C. Lavender works with an ever-evolving structure of live instrumentation, voice, computer software, and various electronics. She seeks to create an immersive aural landscape for the listener, an experience which is intensely physical, emotional and ultimately cathartic as noted in a performance review from the Village Voice; "downright iconic, charged with meaning and transgression."

• Seth Cluett (Hoboken, NJ)
The Wave Farm Residency Program is pleased to welcome Seth Cluett (Hoboken, NJ). Cluett's "Beating the Bounds," refers to a tradition that originated in France, England, and Wales in the 16th Century whereby members of a village or parish walked the property bounds of their territory yearly as a way to teach younger generations about the spatial limits of property ownership.

Cluett will develop a system that allows sound to mark the bounds of a physical area of outdoor space on the property of Wave Farm. The geo-spatial limits of a radio-defined landscape will be delimited by a series of transmitter-receiver pairs that send and receive a post-striking sound to a location far afield from the location of the strike and leaving a reverberated residual sound in its wake. By spatially pairing the strikes with the distanced receiver and loudspeaker the communal experience of walking the bounds marks the volume of the property rather than the borders.

American artist and composer Seth Cluett explores everyday actions at extreme magnification, examines minutae by amplifying impossible tasks, and explores the working of memory in forms that rethink the role of the senses in an increasingly technologized society. Creating work ranging from photography and drawing to installation, concert music, and critical writing, his "subtle...seductive, immersive" (Artforum) sound work has been characterized as "rigorously focused and full of detail" (e/i) and "dramatic, powerful, and at one with nature" (The Wire). The recipient of grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Fund and Meet the Composer, his work has been presented internationally at venues such as The Whitney Museum, MoMA/PS1, Palais de Tokyo, GRM, and STEIM and is documented on Line, Sedimental, Notice, and Winds Measure recordings. In the fall of 2015 he joined the Music & Technology faculty at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.

• John Dombroski (Richmond, VA)
The Wave Farm Residency Program is pleased to welcome John Dombroski (Richmond, VA). Dombroski's "The Broadcast Project" is an ongoing series of site-specific sound performances broadcast live on local radio stations during a six month coast-to-coast road trip, across and around the USA. Sound is comprised of remixed historic music and audio from the region, where each broadcast occurs as well as field recordings, voice, and analog/digital synthesizers.

John Dombroski is a multi-discipline artist working to challenge object-based culture by shifting focus to the significance of everyday spaces and moments. In his recent installations participants are invited to explore the space and sound of a vacant bank building, play another artist’s sculpture like an instrument, and listen to their footsteps follow them across an historic chapel. Since May 2015 he has remixed local American music live on various regional radio stations during an ongoing road trip around the USA. He has exhibited internationally at venues such as Visual Centre for Contemporary Art, Ireland; Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Korea/Worldwide; Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Italy; Churner & Churner, New York; Aurora, Texas; Whitman College, Washington; MSPS New Music Festival, Louisiana; Summercamp’s ProjectProject, Los Angeles; and numerous community radio stations across the USA. He is a Skowhegan (2013), Ox-Bow (2015), and Virginia Commonwealth University (BFA 2011) alumnus. When not traveling, he lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

• David Goren (Brooklyn, NY)
David Goren's "Signal Persistence along the Greyline Path" is comprised of a shortwave radio listening post, setup to monitor and record the daily dawn/dusk long distance reception openings known “greyline” propagation during a 2016 Wave Farm Artist Residency.

The greyline is the terminator between light and darkness that wraps around the earth, briefly enhancing reception for people listening during their local sunrise or sunset. Goren’s project will focus on the ninety, sixty, and forty-nine meter tropical bands where rural stations can be heard from Africa, South America, and Asia. Numbering in the hundreds as recently as 15 years ago, only several dozen of these stations remain today.

The recordings gathered will form the basis for an online audio map; a time-based sonic snapshot of a broadcast culture that will likely fade out permanently over the next few years due to changes in technology and population. Goren’s captures will be logged and soundscapes will be selected, edited and mixed, contributing to Goren’s extended audio work about the final fadeout of tropical band domestic, stations and the experience of listening long distance.

David Goren is a radio producer, and audio archivist whose work blurs the line between audio documentary and sound art. Grounded in intensive monitoring of global broadcast culture, he examines its ability to create and support community over long distances. David has created programming for NPR’s “Lost and Found Sound” series, On the Media, Afropop Worldwide, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, as well as audio-based installations for Proteus Gowanus and The Ethnographic Terminalia Collective. In 2003, he founded the Shortwave Shindig, a multi-hour live mix incorporating spoken word, musical performance, radio tuning, and archival sound. He is also one half of the shortwave radio jam band, The Propagations, with Ned Sublette.

• Meredith Kooi (Atlanta, GA)
The Wave Farm Residency Program is pleased to welcome Meredith Kooi (Atlanta, GA). "The ether swaddles me," is a continuation of Kooi's current artistic and theoretical explorations into transmission art as a feminine poetics with Wave Farm serving as the ground of investigation. The work attempts to map the material and immaterial contours of Wave Farm, from which Kooi will develop a zine and performative installation that incorporates radio transmission, video, and dance. Kooi's project will employ photosensitive synthesizers, theremins, along with FM transmitters and receivers throughout the landscape. Audio recordings will be coupled with drawings, psychogeographic maps, writings, citations from research, and movement scores in an effort to unveil the electromagnetic spectrum as dense and heavy with history and possibility.

Meredith Kooi is a visual and performance artist, curator, and art critic based in Atlanta, working at the intersection of philosophy, feminist science and technology studies, and embodiment using performance, radio, installation, photography, and video. Kooi is the Assistant Director and Editor for Radius, an experimental radio broadcast platform based in Chicago, and the founder and Director of ALTERED MEANS, an amorphous curatorial project based in Atlanta. She was a recipient of Atlanta's Office of Cultural Affairs 2014-2015 Emerging Artist Award and is a 2015-2017 Artist-in-Residence with The Creatives Project. Her writing has been featured in “Art Papers,” “Bad at Sports,” “Temporary Art Review,” and “Wussy,” among others. She received her MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University where she teaches courses in Performance Studies and Visual Studies.

• Ralph Lewis (Urbana, IL)
The Wave Farm Residency Program is pleased to welcome Ralph Lewis (Champaign, IL). Lewis's “Penelope's Endless Book of Magic,” is an ongoing radio opera serial that combines sequential narrative tropes from radio, 21st century operatic aesthetics, and live and fixed electroacoustic music techniques. In each episode, Penelope and her best friend explore a page in the book and try out a new spell. During his residency, Lewis will produce a nightly midnight broadcast sharing the preceding day's episodic progress.

Ralph Lewis is a composer whose work seeks meeting points between sonorous music and arresting noise, alternative tunings and timbre, and the roles of performer and audience. Exploring these intersections has led to frequent collaborations with composer/multi-instrumentalist Jacob A. Barton, bass trombonist Jack Alexander Madden, and historical performance clarinetist/conductor Thomas Carroll, as well as writing for unique and homemade instruments including Barton’s udderbot, reimagined traditional instruments, and live electronics.

Recent performances of Lewis’s work include bassoonist Annie Lyle Mason’s University of Illinois premiere of "I Was on the Side of the Highway, Drive to the Edge," a monthly series of interactive radio pieces for Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7-FM, blowviato and Thereminnards at the 17th Annual Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival, "Print-Throughs" by Standard Rep Bassoon Quartet, "Sound Seeker," a transmission work for WOBC 91.5-FM, and "YWDN," a live electronics solo, at the Berkeley Arts Festival’s Save the Frogs Benefit. This June, his work will be featured at the Fresh Inc Festival in Wisconsin.

Lewis received a B.M. at Oberlin Conservatory and a B.A. in Classical Civilization from Oberlin College. He received an M.F.A. in Electronic Music and Recording Media and an M.A. in Music Composition Mills College’s Center for Contemporary Music, and is currently is pursuing a degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Music Composition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

• Heidi Neilson (Long Island City, NY)
The Wave Farm Residency Program is pleased to welcome Heidi Neilson (Long Island City, NY). The Outernet (https://outernet.is/), a new and separate system outside the internet, is an expanding library collection of data files broadcast from a satellite in space. An Outernet library receive station collects transmissions and stores files locally, allowing them to be accessed by wireless devices in range of the station. The Outernet has been envisioned as an open, worldwide, collaborative platform where anyone can have a say in what is included. More at: https://wiki.outernet.is/wiki/Outernet_Wiki.

Physically the Outernet Library Branch-Wave Farm will be an outdoor area defined by a wifi signal and includes picnic-like library seating, explanation materials and signage, a power outlet, a receiving satellite dish and housing box for electronics. A library branch visitor may step into library area and, through the wireless on their cell phone, tablet, or computer, may browse, read, download, and save materials transmitted from a satellite in space.

Heidi Neilson is an artist addressing topics such as weather, fake snow, and the cultural landscape of outer space. Her work, often collaborative and publishing-based, has been supported by the Art Matters Foundation, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Center for Book Arts, the College Book Art Association, The Drawing Center, Wave Farm, Flux Factory, I-Park, the International Print Center New York, the Islip Art Museum, Kala Art Institute, LMCC, the Lower East Side Printshop, Provisions Library, the Queens Museum of Art, Visual Studies Workshop, and Women’s Studio Workshop. Neilson is a member of the ABC Artists’ Books Cooperative; she co-founded SP Weather Station, and her work is included in over 60 museum and university collections. Born in Oregon, Neilson received a BA in biology from Reed College and an MFA in painting from Pratt Institute. She lives and works in New York.

• Quintron (New Orleans, LA)
The Wave Farm Residency Program is pleased to welcome Quintron (New Orleans, LA). Quintron's "Upstate Warlock" is a weather-controlled, analog, drone synthesizer permanently installed on the Wave Farm grounds and specifically tailored to the climate of New York's Hudson Valley. Outdoor sensors will detect wind, sun, moisture, and temperature; variables that subtly modulate a harmonic drone chord available to listeners on-site and online.

Quintron has been making genre-defying noise, soundscape, and house-rocking dance music in New Orleans for over 20 years. The majority of his fifteen full-length albums, many created with artist / puppeteer Panacea Theriac (aka Miss Pussycat), have the psychedelic soul of New Orleans party jams as filtered through tough distorted organs and a junk heap of self-made electronic instruments. In the year 1999, Quintron helped to foster a DIY analog synth revival with a patented instrument called the Drum Buddy, a light-activated analog drum machine which creates murky, low-fidelity, rhythmic patterns triggered by the rotation of recycled #10 pizza sauce cans. In 2011 the New Orleans Museum of Art presented a large scale exhibit on the evolution of the Drum Buddy as well as allowing Quintron to hole himself up in one of their galleries for three months to create the epic experiment "Sucre Du Sauvage" (Goner 2011).

Spring 2014 Quintron and Miss Pussycat resided at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva, Florida, where Quintron completed a weather controlled analog drone synthesizer called "Weather Warlock" and launched a website devoted to streaming its music called Weather For The Blind. In October 2016, Quintron will install a new iteration of this project "Upstate Warlock" at Wave Farm during an 2016 artist residency. Quintron continues to lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana as well as touring, teaching, and lecturing in this world and beyond.

• Elia Vargas (Oakland, CA)
The Wave Farm Residency Program is pleased to welcome Elia Vargas (Oakland, CA). Vargas's "Crude Illumination" is a light projection installation. The piece consists of an acrylic container of oil (crude) and dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) placed on an overhead projector. As the room temperature oil causes the dry ice to sublimate (at -109.3ºF), the dry ice changes shape and state, and interacts with the liquid oil surface and light projection. This dynamic information exchange is projected onto a nearby wall, via an analog projection apparatus. “Crude Illumination” is a material and theoretical study of the influence of information embodiment in the anthropocene, an introduction to what Vargas calls signal flow.

Vargas writes, "The invisible yet physical state of transmission articulates the same infrastructure that enables ‘Crude Illumination’–the same mysterious causality that mystifies western humanity. With transmission, and all its acoustic ecologies and dependent infrastructure technologies (transmitters, receivers, amplifiers, etc.), a strata of meaning solidifies, yet meaning we only articulate symptomatically. Like Crude Illumination, we see the materiality, but the invisible forces carry the energy." At Wave Farm, Vargas will develop the "Crude Illumination" project further, exploring the transmission possibilities of crude oil and frozen carbon-dioxide.

Elia Vargas is an Oakland based artist and curator. He works in video, sound, projection, and situational experiences that explore mediated information embodiment. He has collaborated with a wide range of artists and musicians including Bjork and Vincent Moon. He performs and exhibits work locally and internationally. Vargas is co-founder and co-curator of the Living Room Light Exchange, a monthly salon on new media art and digital culture; half of improvisational modular synthesis duo systemritual; board member of Mediate Art Group, organizer of the Soundwave Biennial; and a PhD student in Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz. Vargas has a long history of community radio broadcasting and is interested in the relationship of transmission and cultural material flows. He is currently investigating the materiality of crude oil, frozen carbon dioxide, and obsolete projection technology in the anthropocene.

• Bryan Zimmerman (Jersey City, NJ)
The Wave Farm Residency Program is pleased to welcome Bryan Zimmerman (Jersey City, NJ). Zimmerman's "Interspecies Radio Shack" is a small, collapsible, shack/lounge/audio-visual installation devoted to the mixing of sounds and images from amateur shortwave radio with sounds and images of nature (specifically insects, amphibians, and birds of the Catskill region). A series of radio works on the subject of amateur radio will be presented inside the shack as well as broadcast on Wave Farm Radio and WGXC. "Interspecies Radio Shack" is being developed for the event Lodge 2016, where it will be available to public audiences in conjunction with weekend festival activities.

Bryan Zimmerman's interdisciplinary work draws from relationships with nature, place, and the outdoors. His unconventional approach to materials and social space routinely integrates audio and visual collage, unique forms of "sculptural photography"/three-dimensional decoupage, outdoor installation, performance, analog animation, light and shadow play, sample-based audio composition, lyrics and songwriting, turntablism, ambient "remixes" of field recordings and shortwave radio transmissions, and peculiar appropriations of found urban detritus and other archival audio and visual ephemera. Born and raised in Kansas and currently based in Jersey City and the Hudson Valley, Zimmerman co-manages the photography lab and frequently teaches photography at The Cooper Union.

The Wave Farm Residency Program is supported, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; the National Endowment for the Arts; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Greene County Legislature through the County Initiative Program, administered in Greene County by the Greene County Council on the Arts; and generous individual donors.

Click here to download or play an audio version of this report.

Emma Rodero, a communication and psychology professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain, released a study in 2015 called, “Influence of Speech Rate and Information Density on Recognition: The Moderate Dynamic Mechanism,” that, “may have significant repercussions for newscasters and radio stations.” Students tested in the study considered 150 words per minute to be a slow pace for someone talking. A speed of 170 to 190 words per minute was rated as “normal” and a speech rate of 210 words per minute was considered fast. At below 150 words per minute, or above 210 words per minute, students had the trouble with information density, producing “cognitive overload.” So here is this report again, first played at 140 words per minute, then 160, then 180, then 210 words per minute.

Gabi Schaffner‎ installation for transmitter, bird house (or similar) and radio. Two texts, one poem one prose, one English one German, one synthetic voice one human.



Jason Martin "Dog Mind" from 2016 LP "Power Animal System Methods" featuring Power Animal System. Record release show April 16 at Low Beat in Albany.



Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith, "Passages" from "A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke" (ECM)



Noveller, "Glacial Wave." Noveller is part of the 24-hour Drone show at Basilica Hudson Apr. 23-24 broadcast live on WGXC and Wave Farm Radio.



Psychic Ills, "I Don't Mind" (with Hope Sandoval) from "Inner Journey Out"



Kid Cudi, "The Frequency" Produced by Mike Dean, Plain Pat, and Kid Cudi.



Jake Meginsky, from Western Massachusetts aka Vapor Gourds, "Seven Psychotropic Sinewave Palindromes" (excerpt from NNATapes)



The Body, "Shelter Is Illusory" from "No One Deserves Happiness" (Thrill Jockey Records)

Programming changes at WGXC this week:

• "Off The Hook," the hacking show from the 2600 collective, moves at 8 a.m. Saturdays. It airs first at 7 p.m. Wednesdays on WBAI in New York City, and is repeated on WGXC.

• "Unpacking Faith," from Reverend Michelle Lewis, is a weekly interfaith broadcast Sundays from 6-8 a.m.

Last week George Carlin's 1972 album "Class Clown," his fourth, was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry due to its "cultural, historic, or artistic significance." Recorded on May 27, 1972 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California, and released in September, "Class Clown," dedicated to Lenny Bruce, contains the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television."

Click here to play or download an audio version of this report.

More reactions to the Justice Department's decision to drop its lawsuit with Apple over breaking into an iPhone belonging to one of the alleged San Bernardino shooters, after they found a way to hack it themselves. The FBI, several observers note, still want Apple to unlock other iPhones of other alleged criminals. Here are a few reactions:

• Alex Abdo, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “This case was never about just one phone. It was about an unprecedented power-grab by the government that was a threat to everyone’s security and privacy. Unfortunately, this news appears to be just a delay of an inevitable fight over whether the FBI can force Apple to undermine the security of its own products. We would all be more secure if the government ended this reckless effort.”

• The New York Times wrote, "Yet law enforcement’s ability to unlock an iPhone through an alternative method raises new questions, including about the strength of Apple’s security on its devices."

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote, "This new method of accessing the phone raises questions about the government’s apparent use of security vulnerabilities in iOS and whether it will inform Apple about these vulnerabilities. As a panel of experts hand-picked by the White House recognized, any decision to withhold a security vulnerability for intelligence or law enforcement purposes leaves ordinary users at risk from malicious third parties who also may use the vulnerability."

Click here to play or download an audio version of this report.

Wired and others reported that the Justice Department dropped its lawsuit with Apple over breaking into an iPhone belonging to one of the alleged San Bernardino shooters, after they found a way to hack it themselves. The Justice Department asked a California court March 28 to vacate its previous order commanding Apple to create a software tool to help authorities break into the phone. “The government has asked a United States Magistrate Judge in Riverside, California to vacate her order compelling Apple to assist the FBI in unlocking the iPhone,” United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker said in a statement. “Our decision to conclude the litigation was based solely on the fact that, with the recent assistance of a third party, we are now able to unlock that iPhone without compromising any information on the phone…. Although this step in the investigation is now complete, we will continue to explore every lead, and seek any appropriate legal process, to ensure our investigation collects all of the evidence related to this terrorist attack.” The same day The Washington Post reported about a study that shows government surveillance causes people to self-censor their dissenting opinions online. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly published the study that showed that the majority of participants reacted by suppressing opinions that they perceived to be in the minority, when they were aware of government surveillance. How did the study work: "Participants in the study were first surveyed about their political beliefs, personality traits and online activity, to create a psychological profile for each person. A random sample group was then subtly reminded of government surveillance, followed by everyone in the study being shown a neutral, fictional headline stating that U.S. airstrikes had targeted the Islamic State in Iraq. Subjects were then asked a series of questions about their attitudes toward the hypothetical news event, such as how they think most Americans would feel about it and whether they would publicly voice their opinion on the topic," the Post reported. Elizabeth Stoycheff, lead researcher of the study and assistant professor at Wayne State University, said, “So many people I've talked with say they don't care about online surveillance because they don't break any laws and don't have anything to hide. And I find these rationales deeply troubling,” she said. “The fact that the 'nothing to hide' individuals experience a significant chilling effect speaks to how online privacy is much bigger than the mere lawfulness of one's actions. It's about a fundamental human right to have control over one's self-presentation and image, in private, and now, in search histories and metadata,” she said.

The Associated Press reports that the first radio-controlled drone delivered bottled water, food, and a first-aid kit to a residential location in a small Nevada town March 10, in what the drone manufacturer and Nevada Governor call the first drone home delivery in the U.S. A six-rotor drone flew a half-mile pre-programmed GPS route and lowered the package outside a vacant residence southeast of Reno. Regular drone delivery may be the future, but currently NASA is working with the drone industry and the Federal Aviation Administration to create a low-altitude air traffic control system, largely to regulate drones.