Ars Technica reports that lightning-quick 5G cell service will launch later this year, with the first 5G devices available in 2019. AT&T has been testing the new service, with better-than-expected results. They've gotten reliable speeds of more than a gigabit per second from millimeter wave frequencies, even in bad weather. And even non-line-of-sight connections have performed better than expected, with very low latencies, the company said. Currently, mobile devices use 4G LTE networks on frequencies below 1GHz, which are good for covering long distances and penetrating obstacles. The 5G networks will use millimeter wave signals of 30GHz and above, which were not thought to do well with building walls and getting through foliage. That means instead of seeing the occasional cell tower every few miles, there will be lots of small antennae beaming cell signals from poles, town halls, church steeples, and other structures. AT&T has been testing 5G in In South Bend, Indiana; Kalamazoo, Michigan; and Waco, Texas. Weather does not seem to be blocking the radio waves, which are traveling up to 900 feet away from the cell sites in line-of-sight conditions. That still means a lot of transmitters and antennae need to be hung around the country, if they are every 900 feet or so. In exchange so, users get 1.2Gbps speeds, compared to 15Mbps average speeds that OpenSignal say are the norm for 4G. It will be awhile before consumers can use those speeds, though, with T-Mobile planning to build out 5G mobile networks in just U.S. 30 cities this year, and Sprint not starting until 2019.

NBC News reports that four U.S. government sources tell them that Russians are jamming American radio-controlled military drones in Syria. "GPS receivers in most drones can be fairly easily jammed," said Dr. Todd Humphreys, the director of the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. "It's like shooting at them with radio waves instead of bullets." Blocking or scrambling a drone's reception of a signal from a Global Positioning System satellite could cause them to malfunction or crash. "At the very least it could cause some serious confusion" for the drone operator who might read an incorrect position and get lost. Humphreys says the Russian military began jamming drones in eastern Ukraine four years ago, during the invasion of Crimea. U.S. military officials are mum about what the Russian signal-blocking is doing to the smaller surveillance drones. "The U.S. military maintains sufficient countermeasures and protections to ensure the safety of our manned and unmanned aircraft, our forces and the missions they support," said Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon.

Bloomberg reports about a plan at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to monitor news sources and compile a database of journalists, editors, foreign correspondents, and bloggers in an effort to locate the top “media influencers.” The Department put out a request for information April 3 to find a contractor to do the job. “Services shall provide media comparison tools, design and rebranding tools, communication tools, and the ability to identify top media influencers,” according to the statement. DHS agencies have, “a critical need to incorporate these functions into their programs in order to better reach federal, state, local, tribal, and private partners,” the announcement said. That's more than 290,000 global news sources: online, print, broadcast, cable, radio, trade and industry publications, local, national and international outlets, and social media. This comes as 19 U.S. lawmakers sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month, asking for Qatar-based Al Jazeera to register as a foreign agent because it “often directly undermines” U.S. interests with even-handed coverage of the Middle East that is not all pro-Israel like most media outlets. Ted Cruz, a Senator from Texas, suggests it is not just the journalism of well-respected Al Jazeera that Americans need to fear. "The Department of Justice's recent designation of Russia's RT America as a foreign agent, as well as the questionable practices of Al Jazeera and China Central Television, strongly suggest the presence of a subversive threat in the United States," he said.

In response to the Sinclair message aired: "WMSN/FOX47 Madison did not air the Sinclair promotional announcement during our 9pm news this weekend. Rather, we stayed true to our commitment to provide our Madison area viewers local news, weather and sports of interest to them." pic.twitter.com/MdQ568cWrH

— FOX 47 Madison (@fox47madison) April 2, 2018

Deadspin has another story about the Sinclair Broadcast Group, about how employees around the United States at Sinclair affiliates have reacted to its viral story last week that included a collage of dozens of Sinclair station anchors being forced to read the same script about vague, alleged "fake news." The story about the scripts has been out for a month, but when Deadspin overlayed video of the anchors parroting the same lines, it became a much larger issue. Now, some of the employees of those Sinclair stations around the country are telling their side of the story to Deadspin, a sports website, and others. Employees complain that their stations local newscasts are now shorter, because the mandated videos and scripts from Sinclair cut into news time. For years, local television news has been full of commentaries during well-labeled owners' editorials. The Sinclair scripts and commentaries from former Donald Trump aide Boris Epshteyn aren't always clearly labeled. In Albany New York, at least one Democrat running for Congress vowed not to run ads on the local Sinclair stations, WRGB and WCWN. That could prove costly during election season, if more Democrats boycott Sinclair stations. So some stations, and employees are doing what they can to resist eroding their journalistic reputations, though most are trying not to be fired. One station, WMSN, or FOX47, in Madison, Wisconsin tweeted after the Deadspin viral video came out that they, "did not air the Sinclair promotional announcement during our 9 p.m. news this weekend. Rather, we stayed true to our commitment to provide our Madison area viewers local news, weather, and sports of interest to them." Other Sinclair stations told Deadspin they were only airing the longer anchor-announced script during local news time, and refusing to cut a second, shorter "promotional" ad during commercial time. A local news anchor, Delaine Mathieu at WOAI in San Antonio, Texas, wrote on Facebook that she was just trying to keep her job, "Trust me, this was awful.... We had several closed-door meetings and even had to re-record our version because we looked so mortified in the first cut. But we gathered our composure and did our job knowing this would happen.... It sucks. It just does. You will make your judgment and I can’t change that." Another anonymous local anchor told Deadspin, "I’m the person making sure Boris has ‘commentary’ on it in big, big font.... So if I left, they would bring someone in maybe with less experience, who maybe isn’t [making sure of that].” One news producer at Sinclair's KHGI in Nebraska quit on March 26, before the viral video. “This is almost forcing local news anchors to lie to their viewers,” Justin Simmons told CNN, adding that there were “several segments that have made me uncomfortable.” But Simmons could quit because he wasn’t under contract. Bloomberg reports, "According to copies of two employment contracts reviewed by Bloomberg, some Sinclair employees were subject to a liquidated damages clause for leaving before the term of their agreement was up: one that requires they pay as much as 40 percent of their annual compensation to the company." Though this story is new, Sinclair has been at this sort of thing before. In 2004 they wanted all their local stations to air a biased anti-John Kerry documentary during the presidential election, but backed down at the last moment. Before that, during the Iraq War, Nightline had a full episode reading aloud the names of U.S. soldiers killed during that conflict and Sinclair pre-empted the broadcast on the ABC affiliates it owned. Now, local reporters at local television stations just want to air the local news. “People are upset that the editorial control has been taken out of our newsroom. We feel like we should decide what news is of interest to our viewers,” one local news station worker told Deadspin.

All Access reports that the Pacifica Foundation and WBAI have settled with their landlord Empire State Realty Trust, releasing the radio organization’s New York radio station from a court judgment and the last two years of its lease at the Empire State Building. The Pacifica Foundation owns five non-commercial radio stations across the country, and distributes radio material to hundreds of U.S. stations. The settlement should put the always-rickety organization on firmer ground, with a $1.8 million liability at least delayed. Under the agreement, WBAI will get a new transmitter and move its antenna from the Empire State Building to 4 Times Square. Board Chair, Nancy Sorden said in a Pacifica press release, “These series of steps – getting a loan to resolve the judgment, release from the remainder of the lease, moving to our new site, and launching our search for a permanent Executive Director, are steps we are taking to give us the time to recover, stabilize, and improve our operations. This is our opportunity to return Pacifica to its place at the forefront of being a place to hear alternative, progressive, corporation-independent, and community-based voices of music, news, information, and inspiration at a time when they are desperately needed in this country and around the world." WGXC is a Pacifica affiliate.

While legislators are pushing a new law with much steeper fines against pirate radio operators through Congress, the Federal Communications Commission is cracking down with a new round of raids on scofflaw stations. On March 26, in Boston, transmission equipment was seized from “Big City,” which used three different FM frequencies, and “B87.7 FM,” with with Federal Marshals and the Boston Police Department. John Anderson at DIYmedia.net reports that Big City stayed on the air for most of 11 years on three channels despite 15 visits or actions from the FCC, the U.S. Attorney's office, and the U.S. Treasury. This week, sent Notices of Unlicensed Operation to three alleged pirate operations in Brooklyn. They include Parkash 1718 LLC on 105.7-FM, 108 Field Place Realty LLC on 99.3-FM, and Jean Claude Michel Nostrant Ave. at 90.9-FM, Radio World reports. The FCC also sent a letter to Angel Rigoberto on 90.5-FM in Newark, New Jersey, and visited Jerome Moultrie at Northeast 149th St. in Miami who was operating on 90.1-FM. And in Fayetteville, North Carolina this week, FCC agents warned Freddie Rodriguez, who was using the 87.9-FM frequency.

Ars Technica reports that in a March 26 letter to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged for the first time ever that the use of unauthorized cell-site simulators in Washington D.C. The devices, known commonly as Stingrays because of one brand name or International Mobile Subscriber Identity-catchers, trick mobile devices into believing they are cell towers. Once locked in, the devices can steal data, pinpoint user locations, and/or plant malware. "Overall, [The Department of Homeland Security's National Protection and Programs Directorate] believes the malicious use of IMSI catchers is a real and growing risk," wrote Christopher Krebs, DHS' acting undersecretary in the letter to Wyden. Police around the country use the Stingrays, but they usually do not admit to it. "In 2015, various federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, said that, in most circumstances, they will require a warrant when they use a stingray. Some states also impose similar requirements," the Ars Technica report says. The DHS letter says it is aware of non-police use of the devices in other cities, although it also says it does not know how to detect their usage. Activists have complained about police usage of the devices because they don't pinpoint targets, but sweep up many cell phones where they are located.

Deadspin, the sports website, was the first media outlet to collect recordings of many local Sinclair Broadcast Group stations with their anchors reading the exact same script, and put them together. Three weeks ago, CNN reported the story that local anchors were being forced to read a controversial script that parrots the president's repeated accusation of "fake news." Now, assembled by Deadspin the Sinclair story has gone viral, as the propaganda of a network of stations forcing the same scripts on local anchors becomes more apparent. An audio recording of the Deadspin collage, mixed with the full recording of Liz Bishop and Greg Floyd reading the script on WRGB, the CBS affiliate in Albany, is here. The story was also picked up for the second time by John Oliver on his HBO show "Last Week Tonight," and on CNN and MSNBC, and other outlets. This is not Sinclair's first propoganda attempt, as in 2004 Sinclair forced its affliates to broadcast a 45-minute propaganda film allegding falsehoods against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's service in the Vietnam War. Now Sinclair owns the most local stations around the country, 193. That number will rise to 220 and its reach to 72 percent of U.S. homes, if a merger with Tribune Media is allowed. Scott Livingston, Sinclair's senior vice president of news, defended the must-read script on his stations in USA Today. “It is ironic that we would be attacked for messages promoting our journalistic initiative for fair and objective reporting, and for specifically asking the public to hold our newsrooms accountable," Livingston said. "Our local stations keep our audiences’ trust by staying focused on fact-based reporting and clearly identifying commentary.” In December 2016 President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives that Trump's campaign struck a deal with the Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage prior to the election. Trump took to Twitter to defend Sinclair after the video went viral. "So funny to watch Fake News Networks ... criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased," the president tweeted. "Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke." Anchors at some of the Sinclair stations are not laughing, with one telling CNN, "I felt like a POW recording a message," when reading the script. Another told CNN, "It sickens me the way this company is encroaching upon trusted news brands in rural markets."

CNBC reports that the Federal Communications Commission approved the first application to provide broadband service through satellites on March 29. Elon Musk's SpaceX applied to provide broadband services through low-Earth orbit satellites. "With this action, the Commission takes another step to increase high-speed broadband availability and competition in the United States," the FCC said in a statement. SpaceX's proposed satellite system would use 4,425 satellites with frequencies in the Ka and Ku bands, which are 12-18 GHz and 27-40 GHz, respectively. "We appreciate the FCC's thorough review and approval of SpaceX's constellation license. Although we still have much to do with this complex undertaking, this is an important step toward SpaceX building a next-generation satellite network that can link the globe with reliable and affordable broadband service, especially reaching those who are not yet connected," said Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer at SpaceX, in a statement. Read the full story at CNBC.

Acra, NY—Wave Farm announced today ten recipients of the 2018 New York State Council on the Arts in Partnership with Wave Farm: Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) for Artists: Claudia Hart, Ekene Ijeoma, Cecilia Lopez, Simon Liu, Kristin Lucas, Heidi Neilson, Efraín Rozas, Julia Weist & Nestor Siré, James N. Kienitz Wilkins, and Betty Yu.

The New York State Council on the Arts in Partnership with Wave Farm: Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) supports electronic media and film organizations, as well as individual artists, in all regions of New York State. The Fund provides unique and critical support with a focus on sustainability and public engagement. Grants to media artists support the distribution and exhibition of works in all genres of time-based and moving image media, including emergent technology. Funding assists artists in making recently completed works available to public audiences, and advances artistic exploration and public engagement in the media arts.

The Media Arts Assistance Fund is a Regrant Partnership of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Electronic Media and Film Program and Wave Farm.

NYSCA Electronic Media & Film Program Director, Karen Helmerson, said “The NYSCA Regrant program managed by Wave Farm benefits us all in many important ways. This investment of public funds in New York State creates opportunity for public engagement in the media arts, and the development of creative culture through new technology.” Wave Farm Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter said, “Wave Farm is delighted to be able to support these ten outstanding projects that represent the diversity of the media arts landscape in New York State.”

The Media Arts Assistance Fund for Artists opportunity is in January, annually. Grantees are selected through a competitive panel process. Detailed information about the 2018 MAAF projects is included on the following pages of this release.

The New York State Council on the Arts is dedicated to preserving and expanding the rich and diverse cultural resources that are and will become the heritage of New York’s citizens. The Council believes in artistic excellence and the creative freedom of artists without censure, and the rights of all New Yorkers to access and experience the power of the arts and culture, and the vital contribution the arts make to the quality of life in New York communities. http://arts.ny.gov

Wave Farm is a non-profit arts organization driven by experimentation with broadcast media and the airwaves. Our programs—Transmission Arts, WGXC 90.7-FM, and Media Arts Grants—provide access to transmission technologies and support artists and organizations that engage with media as an art form. http://wavefarm.org

GRANTEES AND PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS

Claudia Hart—The Flower Matrix
With The Flower Matrix, Claudia Hart proposes a new kind of liminal space: an augmented-reality environment that is both hypnotic and contemplative, created for immersion in a VR world. The Flower Matrix environment is a reinterpreted “labyrinth of the minotaur,” a mythological maze from which there is no escape, but instead is a chamber for live, virtualized performance. Hart’s mixed-reality architecture is fantastical, embellished by decorative elements embracing an aesthetic of the fake in which technology has replaced nature: sugary sweet and chemically toxic in equal measures. MAAF funding will support multiple installations of The Flower Matrix in 2018, including at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, New York.

Ekene Ijeoma—Deconstructed Anthems
Deconstructed Anthems is sound-reactive light installation which transforms the Star-Spangled Banner into a multisensorial social barometer that responds to the state of the race equality and The American Dream starting with mass incarceration. Audiences are confronted with a large prison cell room barred with LED lights and two-way mirrors. Inside, a player piano and separately a performance ensemble repeat "The Star-Spangled Banner" multiple times, each time selecting, editing and eventually removing notes at the rate of mass incarceration, and finally ending in silence. MAAF funding will support the installation of Deconstructed Anthems in New York City in 2018.

Cecilia Lopez—Red / Eardrumcluster
Lopez’s Red / Eardrumcluster explores the relation and interaction between unstable acoustic feedback systems. Employing nets of woven speaker wire, or amplified steel-drums with live performers and feedback, Lopez’s work is presented as installation or performance in a variety of scales and formats, where components are arranged with a site-specific regard. MAAF funding will support the distribution of a first physical edition of recordings derived from her sound art work realized during Mixology Festival 2017, at Roulette, Brooklyn, and during a 2017 artist residency at Harvestworks, New York.

Simon Liu—Ocean Terminal
Ocean Terminal is the product of the artist’s photographic and structural experiments on 35mm film throughout 2017 and continues Liu’s personal exploration of migration, cultural dislocation, memory and the interconnectedness observed in city life. By exploiting the material potentials of the film strip, the work ruminates on the overwhelming number of images and disparate ideas we are confronted with on a moment to moment basis. The first component of the project (Star Ferry) premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and will be screened at the upcoming Hong Kong International Film Festival and European Media Art Festival. MAAF funding will help facilitate the technical needs for an upcoming multimedia installation edition of Ocean Terminal, fund film prints for theatrical exhibition, and aid the long-term preservation of the work.

Kristin Lucas—Dance with flARmingos
Dance with flARmingos is a tech-enabled mixed reality experience that stages a kinship between humans and virtual flamingos in an ecologically ethical way. MAAF funding will support modifications to infrastructural code of two apps that communicate through network software to create a shared experience for multiple participants. Modifications will simplify the installation setup, reduce presentation costs, and make the work more accessible to a broader audience at a greater number of venues without altering the participant experience. Media assets will be archived and a preservation package will thoroughly document the context, purpose, and use of technological and software components.

Heidi Neilson—Sonic Planetarium
Sonic Planetarium is an audio model of the stuff in earth’s orbit, in real-time. Sound files representing individual satellites play directionally across a speaker array as the actual objects pass far overhead, as if you can hear into space. Visitors walk or sit between and beneath speakers, arranged in a dome configuration emulating the sky, and hear sounds from all directions representing orbiting satellites within range of the installation’s location. MAAF funding will support the exhibition of Sonic Planetarium in 2018.

Efraín Rozas—Myth and Prosthesis
Rozas’s Myth and Prosthesis series asserts that technological devices have become prosthetics that modify our bodies, mind states, and our perception of reality, and that these prosthetics are powerfully informed by the mythologies of modernity, science, and capitalism. Myth and Prosthesis I is a site- specific installation that creates a meditation environment with the aid of a robot that improvises in real- time on Santeria bata drums and synthesizers. MAAF funding will support three installations of Myth and Prosthesis I in New York including promotion, and documentation.

Julia Weist & Nestor Siré—ARCA
El Paquete Semanal (“The Weekly Package”) is a one terabyte digital media collection that is aggregated weekly in Cuba and circulated via in-person file sharing. El Paquete is an extension of decades of black market media circulation responding to the Cuban government’s total control on broadcast, publication, and distribution. ARCA (2016-2017), presents an interactive archive of 52 weeks, or one year, of El Paquete Semanal. Because El Paquete is completely ephemeral (each week is deleted to make room for the next), ARCA is the only existing archive of the paquete files circulated from 2016 to 2017. MAAF funding will support making the archive available for research and exploration at Rhizome at the New Museum and Triple Canopy, New York.

James N. Kienitz Wilkins—Mediums
Mediums is a medium-length movie filmed exclusively in medium shots about a group of potential jurors gathered on break who anticipate their involvement in the American legal system while channeling real world advice to pass the day. Taking the form of an “experimental sitcom,” it is an unofficial sequel to Kienitz Wilkins’s feature film, Public Hearing (2012). MAAF funding will support a distribution plan including ongoing film festival screenings, subtitling, and publishing on Bluray and online platforms.

Betty Yu—Three Tours
Three Tours is a documentary film that captures the lives of three U.S. military veterans, Nicole Goodwin, Ramon Mejia, and Ryan Holleran, as they work to heal their wounds and battle with PTSD resulting from their deployments in Iraq. The film follows their transformation from U.S. military trained soldiers to agents of change advocating for proper mental health treatment of veterans and an end to unjust wars. MAAF funding will support a three-tiered distribution plan including co-presentations with veteran, peace, mental health, and Iraqi NGO organizations. Festival submissions will target those with niche audiences invested in the film’s subject matter, and a DVD distribution strategy will engage audiences through nonprofit and educational screenings.

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Acra, NY— Wave Farm announced today the ten artists and projects selected for the 2018 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 June through October.

The Wave Farm Residency program provides artists with a valuable opportunity to concentrate on new transmission artworks 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. Resident works are archived in the Wave Farm Transmission Arts Archive at http://transmissionsart.org.

In 2018, Wave Farm welcomes DinahBird and Jean-Philippe (Paris, France); Mollye Bendell (Baltimore, MD); Dan Tapper (Toronto, Canada); Nicholas Knouf (Wellesley, MA); Kate Donovan (Berlin, Germany); Amanda Dawn Christie (Montreal, Canada); Angus Tarnawsky (Toronto, Canada); Doug Kaplan aka MrDougDoug (Chicago, IL); Clara Lou (Brooklyn, NY); and Aaron Dilloway (Oberlin, OH).

Wave Farm Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter said, “Artists making multidimensional work with and about the airwaves is what transmission art is all about. This year’s roster of artists, selected from our largest application pool to-date, has proposed exceptional projects that experiment with the radio spectrum in installation, composition, and performance. 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 program continues to experience.”

WAVE FARM RESIDENCY PROGRAM SELECTED ARTISTS AND PROJECTS

DinahBird and Jean-Philippe (Paris, France)— Tuning the World Tuning the World is a series of outdoor broadcasts, an active approach to field recording and listening where live sonic drones are transmitted back into the soundscape. Jean-Philippe plays a shruti box, a Northern Indian portable instrument, cousin to the harmonium, while Dinah “actively” records the process, moving back and forth between the environmental sounds such as water, wind and birds and the transmitted sound. Dinah will also play single notes and tuneless human hums, inspired by the local electromagnetic environment, via small FM radios. The aim is not to dominate or disturb, but rather more to observe how the landscape responds to the artists’ emissions.

Inspired by the ideas and methods of R Murray Schafer, his theories on soundscape, and his concept of "wilderness radio," where the “uneventful events of the natural soundscape transmitted without editing into the hearts of cities” (Radical Radio -1987) as well as Pauline Oliveros’ practice of Deep Listening, DinahBird and Jean-Philippe have developed their own "active" listening and recording posture in order to play with the surrounding natural landscape, softly and quietly, and at varying distances from the microphones that document their actions. In addition, at Wave Farm the artists will research and prepare the U.S. chapter of Antenna Gods their ongoing project into the world of (HFT)

High Frequency trading, it’s use of microwave technology, and its related radio history. The project documents these outposts through image and sound, and learning about the past and present uses of these neglected transmission towers.

Mollye Bendell (Baltimore, MD)— Whethervanes In Whethervanes Bendell continues a practice in antenna design, delving farther into the physical side of electronic media, building her own circuits in a playful meditation on the physics of the signal. Whethervanes consists of a series of experimental radios in which components such as the tuner and antennae are subject to the wind. Found and constructed objects including weathervanes, flags, sails, and windmills are used to manipulate different kinds of potentiometers and different antenna configurations. Bendell's specialized and sculpted radio devices mount to roofs, stake into gardens, and observe the tides from piers. Whethervanes illustrate the physical nature of electronic media in conversation with a force of nature.

Mollye Bendell makes digital and analog sculptures to connect with digital and analog worlds. She seeks to create the space between physical beings, to build a practice around intangibility and to meditate on the contradiction of the act of making in the absence of the object. Her work uses the ephemeral nature of electronic media as a metaphor for exploring vulnerability, visibility, and longing in a world that can feel isolating.

Dan Tapper (Toronto, Canada)— Seven Songs for Seven Planets and a Black Hole at the Heart of the Universe Dan Tapper's Seven Songs for Seven Planets and a Black Hole at the Heart of the Universe is a series of seven immersive auditory experiences, based on the planets in our solar system and cited throughout the Wave Farm property. The work is conceived as a journey through the Solar System, informed by data from space and naturally occurring radio waves, disseminated through broadcasts and locative audio. Sound created at each site is generative and evolving based on information gathered from planetary orbits and rotations. In a radio broadcast on Wave Farm's WGXC 90.7-FM Tapper will showcase the raw data for each piece and reveal how it evolves into a finished work, highlighting the shaping and sculpting of data by scientific organizations.

Dan Tapper explores the sonic and visual properties of the unheard and invisible. From revealing electromagnetic sounds produced by the earth’s ionosphere, to mining data from space and forming imaginary structures made from code. His explorations use scientific methods alongside thought experiments resulting in rich sonic and visual worlds.

Nicholas Knouf (Wellesley, MA)— §97.215 Revisited: Poetic Ciphered Transmissions The FCC grants broad ability for licensed amateur radio operators to transmit in specific frequency bands, build custom transceiver equipment, and construct their own experimental antennas. Nevertheless, the content of what is actually transmitted is rather limited. There are vocal minorities of racists and misogynists on the air, and the remaining conversation sticks to the limited topics of the size of one's antenna or the amount of power transmitted. As well, amateur radio operators are, for the most part, prohibited from encrypting or otherwise obscuring the content of their transmissions. Yet there's an interesting loophole in the regulations, in §97.215, "Telecommand of model craft." Because of the need to limit who can control these model craft, the FCC allows the transmissions that control the craft to be encrypted. This, along with telecommand of space stations (that is, orbiting satellites), is the only place in the regulations where obscuring the content is allowed. Knouf's §97.215 Revisited: Poetic Ciphered Transmissions employs this loophole to create a new set of poetic, ciphered communication between himself as the transmitter and the resulting model craft (in this case, a drone).

Nicholas Knouf is a media scholar and artist who lives in the liminal spaces between signal and noise. His current research project is titled At the Limits of Communication and explores how we are searching for signals from extraterrestrial entities. Knouf considers the digital and analog worlds fundamentally intertwined and uses a variety of media in his work such as handmade paper, radio, digital signal processing, augmented reality, and generative poetry. He aims to bring people into closer relationships between themselves on this earth and the entities out there in the cosmos.

Kate Donovan (Berlin, Germany)— The Bespoke Headpiece The Bespoke Headpiece is a radio myth; one that is imagined to date back millennia. The story has travelled orally through generations of those who have lived in locations where the Aurora Borealis reveals itself, and where some women could not only see the illuminated sky, but could also hear the phenomenon. As part of a coming of age ritual girls would spend three nights alone with the Aurora night sky, wearing custom headdresses fashioned as receiving antennas, constructed of natural materials and designed to amplify the reception of sound. Folklore tells of this rite of passage, where reception was so acutely tuned that the young women alone in the night could hear voices of the deceased and the unborn. It is said that these voices provided guidance and support as the girls began their journey into adulthood.

Kate Donovan is a radio artist/practitioner, facilitator and researcher based in Berlin. Her artistic practice deals with radio in an elemental sense, in terms of frequency, transmission and interconnectedness. Her editorial and organizational work in free and community radio fosters inclusion, diversity, and experimentation. With questions of science-fact, the imagined, physical immersion and the “environment” in mind, her research (and in turn, her practice) is an exploration of radio as a natural phenomenon, an artistic medium, and a site for resistance.

Amanda Dawn Christie (Montreal, Canada)— Radio Cowers For close to a decade, Amanda Dawn Christie has been working on a series of projects related to the Radio Canada International (RCI) shortwave transmission site. Built during WWII, and operational for 70 years, RCI was situated in rural New Brunswick; it was the only site of its kind in Canada, and one of the most important in the world. RCI was demolished in 2014, and Christie’s work with this material is still ongoing. Radio Cowers is an extension of Amanda Dawn Christie's expansive and multifaceted Requiem for Radio project, which documents and responds to the dismantling of the Radio Canada International (RCI) transmission site and towers. In Radio Cowers, circuitry for a homemade AM transmitter is sewn into cowhide gloves worn by the artist who plays the cello with a bow constructed of cow bone (sourced from a herd that lived near the towers) and horsehair. A contact microphone inserted into the resonate body of the cello is routed into the wearable transmitter and its signals are received by a radio positioned near the artist. Radio Cowers is a humorous take on the fraught relationship between technology and nature. Christie's instrument is inspired by the cow pastures surrounding the RCI radio towers as well as the dairy farms that had to be relocated because of the proximity of RCI's high voltage emissions.

Amanda Dawn Christie is an interdisciplinary artist working in film, video, performance, photography, installation, sound, and transmission. Her work not only spans across these mediums but also brings them together in ways that blur the boundaries of where one discipline ends and the next begins. She has exhibited and performed in art galleries across Canada, and her films have screened internationally from Cannes to South Korea to San Francisco and beyond. She currently works as an assistant professor of video, performance, and electronics at Concordia University, in Montreal, Quebec. Her current projects look at the relationship between the human body and analogue technology in a digital age, and incorporate basic electronic circuitry and shortwave radio into installations and performance.

Angus Tarnawsky (Toronto, Canada)— Timestreams Timestreams is a webcam audiovisual project investigating sonification of real-world spaces. Utilizing a variety of data extraction techniques, Angus Tarnawsky reinterprets information from webcam streams to produce entirely new "shadow" worlds. By manipulating site-specific data digitally, he explores the interplay between physical and virtual spaces. Through this work, Tarnaswky is developing a unique platform for improvisation and composition as a sound artist. At the core of this project is the use of real-time analysis of audio/video from webcams to compose generative soundscapes. Multiple surveillance cameras capturing video and audio are installed on the Wave Farm grounds. The physical locations for each webcam are chosen based on the dynamism of available visual content and variety of naturally occurring sonic phenomena. A website houses the raw webcam streams, both for the artist's own use within the project and as a way to invite access to the visual aspects of the project.

Angus Tarnawsky's practice employs technology as a means of reimagining day-to-day situations and scenarios. Exploring new media through electro-acoustic improvisation and electronic composition, his work challenges audiences to experience their surroundings from different perspectives. As a whole, Tarnawsky is fascinated by the exposition of what cannot immediately be seen or heard. By instigating dialogues between spontaneity and structure, he hopes to facilitate new ways of understanding relationships between sound and vision. Within this framework, Tarnawsky places considerable importance on translating visual data into sonic information and linking visual content to sound.

Doug Kaplan aka MrDougDoug (Chicago, IL)— Ira Glass Speaks for Himself Inspired by Douglas Kahn’s piece Reagan Speaks for Himself (1980), in which Kahn carefully edits together Ronald Reagan interviews to concoct a hilarious and surreal story, Ira Glass Speaks for Himself is a proposed long-form troll radioplay in which one of radio’s most recognizable voices is mercilessly edited to tell a mind-boggling, magical realism-core, ambling non-story.

As MrDougDoug, Doug Kaplan explores the possibilities of electro-acoustic improvisation and guitar performance in the trio Good Willsmith, while showcasing his peers’ genre-bending electronic music as a co-founder of the Hausu Mountain label. In recent years, Kaplan has directed his attention towards the excesses of the Internet, using the WWW’s hidden treasures and meme culture as source material for his compositions.

Clara Lou (Brooklyn, NY)— Soft Broadcast Spectre Sound Soft Broadcast Spectre Sound is a radio play, mixed live where multiple transmission frequencies serve as both instrumentation and performers. The live mix is performed by moving the radio dial in a structured improvisation. For example, one character's lines may be transmitted on 87.9-FM and another character's lines on 87.7-FM. Lou moves the dial back and forth between the two frequencies in order to "perform" the dialogue. The imperfections of transmission technology are also considered, as signal bleed is embraced and intentional. Commercial radio is integrated the performance, allowing Top 40, Bible radio, and so on to intersperse with the artist's original recordings. Lou’s fractured narrative incorporates Foley, derived from tools and toys in the Wave Farm broadcast studio and augmented by household items, but here the artist employs a craft usually oriented towards making scene more easily graspable, to complicate the narrative space.

Clara Lou is an artist who works with text, sound, and performance, producing radio drama using non-linear narrative, layered voices, and a combination of found and homemade music and sound effects. Lou's work is frequently presented as installation, broadcast live on old radios using FM transmitters.

Aaron Dilloway (Oberlin, OH)— Everyone Eats Garbage Everyone Eats Garbage is a radio work informed by a large archive of obsolete sound effects tape carts that were once used by KXLU 88.9-FM in Los Angeles. Dilloway extends the life of these abandoned and outdated radio artifacts by cutting, splicing, looping, and manipulating them into a new and substantial work for broadcast.

Aaron Dilloway is a celebrated improviser and composer who works with 1/4" tape loops in 8-track cartridges as well as other discarded electronic equipment. In his performance-based practice, he manipulates magnetic tape in real-time by feeding the loops sounds from his body, everyday objects, electronic sources, prepared tapes, as well as the occasional actual instrument.

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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.

Visit https://wavefarm.org/ta/residencies for more information.

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Popular Mechanics reports that those who worry about their privacy on Facebook, but still need to use the social media site for whatever reason, do have options. Mozilla just released a Facebook Container Extension. "Once you set up the extension, Firefox deletes all your Facebook information from itself and only connects to Facebook from inside a software "container." The practical result is that you can look through a sort of one-way mirror to see into Facebook, but Firefox keeps Facebook from looking out," Eric Limer writes in the magazine. Third-party apps that use Facebook to login won't work, and you can't Facebook like or Facebook share items in the non-Facebook world. There are other options, including blocking all of Facebook's subdomains directly (but that disables the site), or installing the Privacy Badger extension.

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View this email in your browser Announcing the 2018 Wave Farm Artists-in-residence and New York State Council on the Arts in Partnership with Wave Farm: MAAF for Artists Grantees. Announcing the 2018 Wave Farm Artists-in-residence Wave Farm is pleased to announce the ten artists and projects selected for the 2018 Wave Farm Residency Program: In 2018, Wave Farm welcomes DinahBird and Jean-Philippe (Paris, France); Mollye Bendell (Baltimore, MD); Dan Tapper (Toronto, Canada); Nicholas Knouf (Wellesley, MA); Kate Donovan (Berlin, Germany); Amanda Dawn Christie (Montreal, Canada); Angus Tarnawsky (Toronto, Canada); Doug Kaplan aka MrDougDoug (Chicago, IL); Clara Lou (Brooklyn, NY); and Aaron Dilloway (Oberlin, OH). Each artist will live and work on-site at the Wave Farm Study Center for ten days during the residency season, which spans June through October. The Wave Farm Residency program provides artists with a valuable opportunity to concentrate on new transmission artworks 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. Resident works are archived in the Wave Farm Transmission Arts Archive at http://transmissionsart.org. DinahBird and Jean-Philippe are sound and radio artists based in Paris. Both their solo and joint practices question the notion of diffusion, transmission and memory and are highly responsive to place. Their work includes sound pieces, installations, broadcasts, performances and publications and is often inspired by early transmission technologies and archives. Their current interests include, electromagnetic hums, old weather, loops, drones, and high frequency trading. Read about their Wave Farm Residency project: Tuning the World. Dan Tapper explores the sonic and visual properties of the unheard and invisible. From revealing electromagnetic sounds produced by the earth’s ionosphere, to mining data from space and forming imaginary structures made from code. His explorations use scientific methods alongside thought experiments resulting in rich sonic and visual worlds. Read about his Wave Farm Residency project: Seven Songs for Seven Planets and a Black Hole at the Heart of the Universe. Kate Donovan is a radio artist/practitioner, facilitator and researcher based in Berlin. Her artistic practice deals with radio in an elemental sense, in terms of frequency, transmission and interconnectedness. Her editorial and organizational work in free and community radio fosters inclusion, diversity, and experimentation. With questions of science-fact, the imagined, physical immersion and the “environment” in mind, her research (and in turn, her practice) is an exploration of radio as a natural phenomenon, an artistic medium, and a site for resistance. Read about her Wave Farm Residency project: The Bespoke Headpiece. Angus Tarnawsky's practice employs technology as a means of reimagining day-to-day situations and scenarios. Exploring new media through electro-acoustic improvisation and electronic composition, his work challenges audiences to experience their surroundings from different perspectives. As a whole, Tarnawsky is fascinated by the exposition of what cannot immediately be seen or heard. By instigating dialogues between spontaneity and structure, he hopes to facilitate new ways of understanding relationships between sound and vision. Within this framework, Tarnawsky places considerable importance on translating visual data into sonic information and linking visual content to sound. Read about his Wave Farm Residency project: Timestreams. Clara Lou is an artist who works with text, sound, and performance, producing radio drama using non-linear narrative, layered voices, and a combination of found and homemade music and sound effects. Lou's work is frequently presented as installation, broadcast live on old radios using FM transmitters. Read about her Wave Farm Residency project: Soft Broadcast Spectre Sound. Mollye Bendell makes digital and analog sculptures to connect with digital and analog worlds. She seeks to create the space between physical beings, to build a practice around intangibility and to meditate on the contradiction of the act of making in the absence of the object. Her work uses the ephemeral nature of electronic media as a metaphor for exploring vulnerability, visibility, and longing in a world that can feel isolating. Read about her Wave Farm Residency project: Whethervanes. Nicholas Knouf is a media scholar and artist who lives in the liminal spaces between signal and noise. His current research project is titled "At the Limits of Communication" and explores how we are searching for signals from extraterrestrial entities. Knouf considers the digital and analog worlds fundamentally intertwined and uses a variety of media in his work such as handmade paper, radio, digital signal processing, augmented reality, and generative poetry. He aims to bring people into closer relationships between themselves on this earth and the entities out there in the cosmos. Read about his Wave Farm Residency Project: §97.215 Revisited: Poetic Ciphered Transmissions Amanda Dawn Christie is an interdisciplinary artist working in film, video, performance, photography, installation, sound, and transmission. Her work not only spans across these mediums but also brings them together in ways that blur the boundaries of where one discipline ends and the next begins. She has exhibited and performed in art galleries across Canada, and her films have screened internationally from Cannes to South Korea to San Francisco and beyond. She currently works as an assistant professor of video, performance, and electronics at Concordia University, in Montreal, Quebec. Her current projects look at the relationship between the human body and analogue technology in a digital age, and incorporate basic electronic circuitry and shortwave radio into installations and performance. Read about her Wave Farm Residency project: Radio Cowers. As MrDougDoug, Doug Kaplan explores the possibilities of electro-acoustic improvisation and guitar performance in the trio Good Willsmith, while showcasing his peers’ genre-bending electronic music as a co-founder of the Hausu Mountain label. In recent years, Kaplan has directed his attention towards the excesses of the Internet, using the WWW’s hidden treasures and meme culture as source material for his compositions. Read about his Wave Farm Residency project: Ira Glass Speaks For Himself.  Aaron Dilloway is a celebrated improviser and composer who works with 1/4" tape loops in 8-track cartridges as well as other discarded electronic equipment. In his performance-based practice, he manipulates magnetic tape in real-time by feeding the loops sounds from his body, everyday objects, electronic sources, prepared tapes, as well as the occasional actual instrument. Read about his Wave Farm Residency project: Everyone Eats Garbage. 2018 MAAF Individual Artist Grantees Announced Wave Farm is pleased to announce the 2018 New York State Council on the Arts in Partnership with Wave Farm: Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) for Artists: Claudia Hart, Ekene Ijeoma, Cecilia Lopez, Simon Liu, Kristin Lucas, Heidi Neilson, Efraín Rozas, Julia Weist & Nestor Siré, James N. Kienitz Wilkins, and Betty Yu. The New York State Council on the Arts in Partnership with Wave Farm: Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) supports electronic media and film organizations, as well as individual artists, in all regions of New York State. The Fund provides unique and critical support with a focus on sustainability and public engagement. Grants to media artists support the distribution and exhibition of works in all genres of time-based and moving image media, including emergent technology. Funding assists artists in making recently completed works available to public audiences, and advance artistic exploration and public engagement in the media arts. The Media Arts Assistance Fund is a Regrant Partnership of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), Electronic Media and Film Program and Wave Farm. Claudia Hart, The Flower Matrix With The Flower Matrix, Claudia Hart proposes a new kind of liminal space: an augmented-reality environment that is both hypnotic and contemplative, created for immersion in a VR world. The Flower Matrix environment is a reinterpreted “labyrinth of the minotaur,” a mythological maze from which there is no escape, but instead is a chamber for live, virtualized performance. Hart’s mixed-reality architecture is fantastical, embellished by decorative elements embracing an aesthetic of the fake in which technology has replaced nature: sugary sweet and chemically toxic in equal measures. MAAF funding will support multiple installations of The Flower Matrix in 2018, including at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, New York. Ekene Ijeoma, Deconstructed Anthems Deconstructed Anthems is sound-reactive light installation which transforms the Star-Spangled Banner into a multisensorial social barometer that responds to the state of the race equality and The American Dream starting with mass incarceration. Audiences are confronted with a large prison cell room barred with LED lights and two-way mirrors. Inside, a player piano and separately a performance ensemble repeat "The Star-Spangled Banner" multiple times, each time selecting, editing and eventually removing notes at the rate of mass incarceration, and finally ending in silence. MAAF funding will support the installation of Deconstructed Anthems in New York City in 2018. Simon Liu, Ocean Terminal  Ocean Terminal is the product of the artist’s photographic and structural experiments on 35mm film throughout 2017 and continues Liu’s personal exploration of migration, cultural dislocation, memory and the interconnectedness observed in city life. By exploiting the material potentials of the film strip, the work ruminates on the overwhelming number of images and disparate ideas we are confronted with on a moment to moment basis. The first component of the project (“Star Ferry”) premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and will be screened at the upcoming Hong Kong International Film Festival and European Media Art Festival. MAAF funding  will help facilitate the technical needs for an upcoming multimedia installation edition of Ocean Terminal, fund film prints for theatrical exhibition and aid the long-term preservation of the work. Cecilia Lopez, Red / Eardrumcluster  Lopez’s Red / Eardrumcluster explores the relation and interaction between unstable acoustic feedback systems. Employing nets of woven speaker wire, or amplified steel-drums with live performers and feedback, Lopez’s work is presented as installation or performance in a variety of scales and formats, where components are arranged with a site-specific regard. MAAF funding will support the distribution of a first physical edition of recordings derived from her sound art work realized during Mixology Festival 2017, at Roulette, Brooklyn, and during a 2017 artist residency at Harvestworks, New York. Kristin Lucas, Dance with flARmingos  Dance with flARmingos is a tech-enabled mixed reality experience that stages a kinship between humans and virtual flamingos in an ecologically ethical way. MAAF funding will support modifications to infrastructural code of two apps that communicate through network software to create a shared experience for multiple participants. Modifications will simplify the installation setup, reduce presentation costs, and make the work more accessible to a broader audience at a greater number of venues without altering the participant experience. Media assets will be archived and a preservation package will thoroughly document the context, purpose, and use of technological and software components. Heidi Neilson, Sonic Planetarium  Sonic Planetarium is an audio model of the stuff in earth’s orbit, in real-time. Sound files representing individual satellites play directionally across a speaker array as the actual objects pass far overhead, as if you can hear into space. Visitors walk or sit between and beneath speakers, arranged in a dome configuration emulating the sky, and hear sounds from all directions representing orbiting satellites within range of the installation’s location. MAAF funding will support will support the exhibition of Sonic Planetarium in 2018. Efraín Rozas, Myth and Prosthesis  Rozas’s Myth and Prosthesis series asserts that technological devices have become prosthetics that modify our bodies, mind states, and our perception of reality, and that these prosthetics are powerfully informed by the mythologies of modernity, science, and capitalism. Myth and Prosthesis I is a site-specific installation that creates a meditation environment with the aid of a robot that improvises in real-time on Santeria bata drums and synthesizers. MAAF funding will support three installations of Myth and Prosthesis I in New York including promotion, and documentation. Julia Weist & Nestor Siré, ARCA El Paquete Semanal (“The Weekly Package”) is a one terabyte digital media collection that is aggregated weekly in Cuba and circulated via in-person file sharing. El Paquete is an extension of decades of black market media circulation responding to the Cuban government’s total control on broadcast, publication, and distribution. ARCA (2016-2017), presents an interactive archive of 52 weeks, or one year, of El Paquete Semanal. Because El Paquete is completely ephemeral (each week is deleted to make room for the next), ARCA is the only existing archive of the paquete files circulated from 2016 to 2017. MAAF funding will support making the archive available for research and exploration at Rhizome at the New Museum and Triple Canopy, New York. James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Mediums Mediums is a medium-length movie filmed exclusively in medium shots about a group of potential jurors gathered on break who anticipate their involvement in the American legal system while channeling real world advice to pass the day. Taking the form of an “experimental sitcom,” it is an unofficial sequel to Kienitz Wilkins’s feature film, Public Hearing (2012). MAAF funding will support a distribution plan including ongoing film festival screenings, subtitling, and publishing on Bluray and online platforms. Betty Yu, Three Tours Three Tours is a documentary film that captures the lives of three U.S. military veterans, Nicole Goodwin, Ramon Mejia, and Ryan Holleran, as they work to heal their wounds and battle with PTSD resulting from their deployments in Iraq. The film follows their transformation from U.S. military trained soldiers to agents of change advocating for proper mental health treatment of veterans and an end to unjust wars. MAAF funding will support a three-tiered distribution plan including co-presentations with veteran, peace, mental health, and Iraqi NGO organizations. Festival submissions will target with niche audiences invested in the film’s subject matter, and a DVD distribution strategy will engage audiences through nonprofit and educational screenings. Wave Farm programs are made possible, 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; the Alexander and Marjorie Hover Foundation; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; the T. Backer Fund; the Joseph Family Charitable Trust; and hundreds of other generous individual donors.               Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*, All rights reserved. *|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|* *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* Our mailing address is: *|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|* *|END:IF|* Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. *|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*

Ars Technica reports that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wants to stop U.S. companies and organizations that receive broadband funding from the FCC from buying from Chinese technology vendors Huawei and ZTE. A 2012 Congressional report encouraged American companies to "consider the long-term security risks associated with doing business with either ZTE or Huawei for equipment or services" and to seek other sources, and a December 2017 letter to the FCC from 18 lawmakers objected to Huawei smartphones being sold by AT&T or other carriers. Both companies have ties to the Chinese government. The implication seems to be that a smartphone, or other Internet-connected device, could be set up as a spying device for the Chinese government. "Hidden ‘back doors’ to our networks in routers, switches—and virtually any other type of telecommunications equipment—can provide an avenue for hostile governments to inject viruses, launch denial-of-service attacks, steal data, and more," Pai said. The Wall Street Journal reports that many, "regional American providers of wireless, TV, and Internet services have flocked to Huawei, attracted by what they say are Huawei’s cheaper prices, quality products and attentive customer service." The FBI's Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee last month that they are "deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks." Huawei and ZTE deny their products are used for spying, and the U.S. has yet to present hard evidence. The FCC can't ban the Chinese products, but can stop companies receiving money from the Universal Service Fund from working with Huawei and ZTE.

Ars Technica reports that lawyers for AT&T, Verizon, and other internet providers plan to sue states that create their own net neutrality rules. "Broadband providers have worked hard over the past 20 years to deploy ever more sophisticated, faster and higher-capacity networks, and uphold net neutrality protections for all," USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter wrote. "To continue this important work, there is no question we will aggressively challenge state or municipal attempts to fracture the federal regulatory structure that made all this progress possible." He was writing on a blog for USTelecom, a lobby group with a board of directors including members from AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, CenturyLink, Windstream, and other telcos. When the Federal Communications Commission voted in December to rollback the net neutrality rules, and allow fast and slow lanes on the Internet, they specifically barred individual states from passing their own net neutrality rules. But the FCC also rolled back the classification of Internet service providers as common carriers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, which experts says does allow states to create their own rules, as the FCC ceded jurisdiction. USTelecom has a history of suing over net neutrality, taking the FCC to court when they passed the rules. Washington state and Oregon are passing their own net neutrality laws, saying the FCC lacks authority to preempt them, and there is net neutrality legislation in more than half of the states in the country. Governors of five states have issued executive orders saying the states can only do business with internet companies that follow the FCC's old rules. And many states are suing the FCC because they overturned the rules last year.

Forbes reports that now that iHeartMedia and Cumulus have declared bankruptcy, expect a sell-off of commercial radio stations around the country. In the past five months the two largest radio conglomerates in the United States have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. iHeart has 850 stations and Cumulus has 450 stations, and the bankruptcy proceedings will force them to sell many of those stations, flooding the market. It is not that radio is dying -- actually 93 percent of Americans listen to radio, more than have a TV (89 percent), a computer (50 percent), or a smart phone (83 percent). Instead, the giant radio conglomerates are dying. iHeartMedia used to be called Clear Channel, and after the horrendous 1996 Telecommunications Act was signed by President Bill Clinton, it began buying up as many stations as it could under that bill's deregulation. That led to cookie-cutter stations, programmed and staffed from afar, that listeners no longer care for. Instead, local stations with interesting content and actual human beings at the controls, are doing better with listeners. Gene Ely writes in Forbes, "The new-old model is local, local, local—stations deeply involved in their communities with local on-air talent that shows up at events and plays the music local listeners want. The DJs read the news. They talk about last Friday night’s high school football game. It’s the only way traditional radio can compete with digital." After the 1996 Telecommunications Act local stations were contacting pirate radio operators for tips, saying they were being forced to sell their mom-and-pop stations because of economics of scale. Similar market forces are now aligning for independent operators to buy commercial radio stations on the cheap later this year.

John Timmer at Ars Technica explains what his website does when faced with yet another so-called scientific study that claims to prove a link between cell phones and cancer. This study involves the The Environmental Health Trust, in a journal called Environmental Research, from Italy's Instituto Ramazzini. Timmer estimates that those sources have solid reputations, at least meaning the research is worthy of consideration. The bad news comes when looking closely at this particular study. This study of long-term exposure of rats to cell phone signals finds three increases in the incidence of cancer in animals exposed to cellphone radiation, but two weren't statistically significant. " If we're going to allow non-significant changes into the conclusions, then the data would just as easily support reporting that cellphones reduce the risk of cancer in some of the experimental groups," Timmer writes. The one significant result is only found in male rats. "These numbers suggest that the one statistical effect seen in this study is caused by the unusually low tumor incidence in the control group, rather than a specific effect of cellphone radiation," Timmer concludes. Of course, if cell phone radiation did cause cancer, just about everyone would be consulting oncologists by now.

Kelcee Griffis at Law360.com reports that many environmental and historic reviews won't be needed to approve the many cell phone antennae that must be hung to create the nation's 5G cell network, after a March 22 vote by the Federal Communications Commission. The Republicans on the FCC, who outnumber the Democrats 3-2, voted to eliminate the need for National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act reviews for the 5G cell fixtures. The 5G technology should give consumers much faster service, but it also means cell phone antennae will 500 feet apart, instead of several miles. So there could be transmitters on telephone or electric poles, municipal buildings, and all sorts of other structures. Already, many states are passing laws limiting the rental limits for each cell signaling device a carrier puts on a tower or pole. The FCC vote declared the act of deploying small cells does not constitute a “federal undertaking” or a “major federal action,” so no reviews under the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Native American tribes and environmental advocates were especially mad about the vote, with one protester interrupting the FCC's meeting. Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel dissented, saying, “A solution to this infrastructure challenge is long overdue — and while today’s decision purports to be one — it misses the mark. It runs roughshod over the rights of our tribal communities and gives short shrift to our most basic environmental and historic preservation values.” Republican Michael O’Rielly disagreed, saying, “For too long, we've allowed a small subset of tribes to unnecessarily slow communications buildout and bring a bad name to the rest of the American tribes that really try to do good faith efforts to work with wireless providers on behalf of consumers.”

Radio World reports that some in Congress are writing up a bill with more harsh penalties for pirate radio operators. Leonard Lance, a Republican from New Jersey, and Paul Tonko, a Democrat from New York, are writing the Preventing Illegal Radio Abuse Through Enforcement Act for their House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. The PIRATE Act proposes to change Title V of the Communications Act of 1934 to increase fines for pirate radio operations. The bill's proposed draft language is just ridiculous, upping the current $10,000 fines to $100,000 each day of broadcasting, with a maximum fine of $2 million. Many of the current $10,000 fines are dismissed on a hardship basis now, and the Federal Communications Commission shouldn't expect to fill its coffers with millions from pirate radio operators. Radio World says, "The draft legislation also calls on the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to conduct enforcement sweeps across the nation’s top five radio markets to identify and terminate illegal broadcasts," which is hilarious as Congress has repeatedly cut the FCC's budget, shrinking the enforcement bureau's workforce. And the act would allow state and local governments to add more fines on top of the $2 million figures, an admission that the current state laws against pirate radio are indeed unconstitutional. The fines, under this proposal, are also meant to go to anyone who "facilitates" the pirate broadcasts, which means landlords, and maybe interviewed guests, could be fined.

Gizmodo reports that while the British switched their television signals from analog to digital in 2012, the BBC is keeping analog FM Radio around "for the foreseeable future." Previously, the government said once 50 percent of consumers had digital radios and 90 percent of the population could receive digital signals, they would switch to DAB. Now, though, the BBC's director of radio and music Bob Shennan thinks ending analog radio would be "premature." He recently said, "We need to do more in the UK before we consider a switchover and for that to be genuinely led by the audience. We are fully committed to digital and we believe we should review the landscape again in a few years' time." Norway is the only country to have gone completely digital, even with 66 percent of Norwegians opposed to the move when it began. In England, many new cars can receive digital signals, but most household FM radios cannot.