free103point9 is pleased to announce the 2009 Distribution Grant for New York State Artists providing support for the distribution of new works in film, video, sound, new-media, and media-installation. This grant is for completed works only.

Funding is available from free103point9 through a regrant from New York State Council on the Arts' Electronic Media and Film Program. Grant awards will assist artists in making works available to public audiences and may include, but are not limited to: duplication of previews, screening, and exhibition copies of moving image and sound works; promotional materials including documentation and schematics of media-installation and new-media works. The rental or purchase of equipment for exhibition/distribution by individual artists is also eligible. Artists may request funding support up to a maximum amount of $10,000, with the typical grant amount awarded generally lower.

New to the Distribution Grant this year, successful applicants will also be awarded the additional opportunity to work with a project consultant. This mentor will have expertise in the grantees' specific genre of media art.

Application Guidelines, FAQs, and Resources will be available at http://www.free103point9.org/nysca in October 2008.

Attend a seminar (or watch online) to learn more about applying for this grant:

Seminar / Panel Dates & Locations:

New York City & Streamed at www.free103point9.org
November 13, 2008, 6:30 p.m.
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
(212) 337-0680

Catskill
December 4, 2008, 6:30 p.m.
Greene County Council for the Arts
398 Main Street Catskill, NY 12414
(518) 943-3400

free103point9 is pleased to announce the 2009 Distribution Grant for New York State Artists providing support for the distribution of new works in film, video, sound, new-media, and media-installation. This grant is for completed works only.

Funding is available from free103point9 through a regrant from New York State Council on the Arts' Electronic Media and Film Program. Grant awards will assist artists in making works available to public audiences and may include, but are not limited to: duplication of previews, screening, and exhibition copies of moving image and sound works; promotional materials including documentation and schematics of media-installation and new-media works. The rental or purchase of equipment for exhibition/distribution by individual artists is also eligible. Artists may request funding support up to a maximum amount of $10,000, with the typical grant amount awarded generally lower.

New to the Distribution Grant this year, successful applicants will also be awarded the additional opportunity to work with a project consultant. This mentor will have expertise in the grantees' specific genre of media art.

Application Guidelines, FAQs, and Resources will be available at http://www.free103point9.org/nysca in October 2008.

free103point9
www.free103point9.org
regrant@free103point9.org
(518) 622-2598
(917) 297-1537

From Conflux blog:

Tianna Kennedy is a Brooklyn, New York-based cellist, sound and transmission artist, curator, events coordinator, adjunct professor, writer, and the NYC Program Director of free103point9, a non-profit transmission arts organization. Kennedy churns out events like an event-churning machine with the help of fellow activists, artists, and friendly art organizations and is herself an active artist and cellist performing and showing locally and internationally. Kennedy co-founded the August Sound Coalition in 2004 and the Empty Vessel Project in 2005. Kennedy designed and taught “Radio Culture” and “Sight, Sound, and Motion” at Brooklyn College and has a MA in Performance Studies from NYU. Listen to an interview with Tianna Kennedy from Conflux 2008 Podcast #5 here.

This panel, Sun. Sept. 14 at the Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon, NY, brings together Benjamin Krevolin, board president of the Dutchess County Council on the Arts, Norm Magnusson, known for his allegoric paintings, his faux historic roadside signs, and his Funism.com website, Tom Roe, founder of Wave Farm in Greene County and a leading proponent of the new Transmission Arts movement, currently on view at the SUNY Purchase's Neuberger Museum. Also on the panel are Sparrow, author/poet/critic, Robert The, Kingston-based conceptual and book artist with a background in philosophy, Christina Varga, Woodstock gallery owner and Brian Wallace, curator at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY-New Paltz. The panel, organized by critic and author Paul Smart, will be streamed live on free103point9 Transmission Art Radio via a link at www.free103point9.org, or tune in by pasting http://comm.free103point9.org:8000/vanbrunt.mp3.m3u into your media player.

Part of "Hudson Valley Invitation exhibition, a broad range of media and styles are represented reflective of the multiplicity of points of view held by artists in the Valley. Our region is close to one of the preeminent art capitals of the world and the artists here, many of whom show their work in New York City, are well aware of the currents of contemporary art. Some chose to go with the flow, others chose to follow their own compass. All of which makes for a fertile and fascinating panorama, well worth knowing better.

Participating artists include: Chris Albert, John Allen, Emil Alzamora, Gabe Brown, Robert Brush, Richard Butler, Richard Deon, Laura Moriarty, Alison Moritsugo, James Murray, Franc Palaia, Jaanika Peerna, Fawn Potash, Lyndon Preston, Eliza Pritzker, Molly Rausch, Angelika Rinnhofer, Robert Rodriguez, Jr., Christie Scheele, Charlotte Schulz, Michael Sibilia, Ed Smith, James Westwater, Eleanor White, Tony Moore, Simon Draper, Rieko Fujinami, Lowell Handler, Matt Harle, Thomas Huber, Peter Iannarelli, Gary Jacketti, Steven Jennis, Grace Knowlton, D.Dominick Lombardi, Susan Magnus, and Norm Magnusson.

Where are we? A simple enough question, but one not easily answered when it comes to mapping the current art scene. Especially in a region that’s part of a larger art world whose topology is in flux. The Hudson Valley Invitational at Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon this month is an attempt to indicate some of the more important artistic markers around here. With one work each from over 30 artists, the exhibition doesn’t claim to be an exhaustive survey. Many more eminently worthy artists could have been added had the gallery’s space allowed. Nevertheless, by presenting a healthy sampling of compelling works by talented artists, the Hudson Valley Invitational serves as an interesting point of departure for further exploration of our local art environment. The idea for the Hudson Valley Invitational came out of the suspended plans for a regional art fair devised by Robert Curcio of Curcio Projects and Carl Van Brunt, owner and director of the Van Brunt Gallery. Assisting in the current show are Jennifer Mackiewicz, co-curator, Bart Bridger Woodstrup, who has compiled a selection of local video artists’ work and Paul Smart, critic and author, who has put together a panel on the Present and Future of the Arts in the Hudson Valley.
http://www.agreatertown.com/beacon_ny/hudson_valley_invitational_at_van_brunt_gallery_00076952

Sept. 14, 2008: 3 p.m.
Van Brunt Gallery, 460 Main St., Beacon, NY
845-838-2995

From Mike Janssen via Future of Music Coalition:

Last fall, the Federal Communications Commission presented a rare opportunity to revitalize local radio in communities across the country. For one week in October, nonprofit groups could apply to the commission for full-power FM radio stations. "This is the first time in more than seven years that applications would be accepted, and we saw this as an amazing opportunity for those communities that have fallen off the radio dial over the years," says Jean Cook, Deputy Director of Future of Music Coalition, a national nonprofit that works with musicians and music advocates.

FMC identified the more than 200 organizations that could benefit from having a full-power radio station. Along with Radio for People coalition, FMC worked to ease a process that would otherwise be daunting, connecting applicants with lawyers and engineers and guiding them through each step of the process. "In particular, we zeroed in on groups that would bring new and diverse music programming to the air," says Cook.

Commercial FM stations deliver narrow playlists of music in a limited range of genres. Meanwhile, public stations are cutting back on music in favor of more news and talk programming. Genres such as classical music are diminishing on radio, independent artists get little airplay and many other kinds of music are underrepresented. More independently owned and operated noncommercial stations on the air could take big steps to reverse this trend and restore musical variety to the airwaves.

Milwaukee is just one city where classical music is fading from the airwaves. It lost a commercial classical station several years ago, and no public station in the area offers the format. So with help from FMC, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra jumped at the chance to start an FM station.

"The possibilities that are represented by this license are just too good to pass up," says Martin Sher, who as an Orchestra Management Fellow with the American Symphony Orchestra League coordinated the MSO's efforts to prepare the FCC application. Operating a station would allow the MSO to provide classical music to its community, promote its own performances to a broad swath of the city's residents and create a new venue for its archive of recorded performances.

Sher found unexpected enthusiasm among community members for a new classical station as he navigated the many twists and turns of readying the FCC application. The president of Norlight Telecommunications, which owns the broadcast tower that the MSO hopes will host its transmitter," expressed real concern over the lack of classical programming" on the airwaves, Sher says. And staffers at the library in Saukville, Wisconsin, which is now hosting MSO paperwork required by the FCC, also shared encouragement, Sher says.

"We found cheerleaders throughout this process," he says, "and I found that personally very gratifying."

For some of the organizations who applied, starting a new FM radio station fit right in with their current activities. Berks Community Television in Reading, Pennsylvania, which already provides important local programming on a cable-delivered public access channel, was one of our most eager applicants.

A new FM station would allow BCTV to bring valuable community-focused programming to a new medium and expand its audience. It would also allow the nonprofit to include more music in its programming, a prospect that local musicians find particularly exciting, says Anne Sheehan, BCTV's executive director.

"This is the opportunity of a lifetime for us to do something that's relevant and that fits our mission — and may give us a whole new audience," Sheehan says. She confirms that applying was much easier that we initially anticipated. "It wasn't so bad, because I had people like FMC to turn to who could answer my questions and connect us with resources," she says. "I couldn't have done that by myself."

Like many activists and would-be broadcasters we talked with, Sheehan laments radio's current lack of diversity and localism. BCTV's entry into FM broadcasting could help to change that.

"There's a need for local noncommercial radio," she says, "because everything is networks. Even NPR. You can go anywhere in the country and listen to NPR, which I love, but there's no localness to it, no sense of community — unless they're doing fundraising."

The chance to provide a hub for community proved a strong draw for many applying organizations. Another is free103point9, an innovative nonprofit based in Acra and Brooklyn, New York, that is devoted to cultivating "transmission arts" — arts that use radio and other transmission technologies as their media.

A full-power FM station would provide a palette for the unique artworks that are free103';s specialty. From its inception, free103 "has always been, first and foremost, interested in what people can do with the airwaves," says Galen Joseph-Hunter, executive director. Because free103's mission statement claims the airwaves as a medium for artistic expression, "the ability to have a full-power educational station is actually very well aligned with that goal," she says.

Yet Joseph-Hunter envisions free103's FM station as more than just an aural art gallery. The station would also cover local news, politics and other issues and invite community members to shape programming. Residents of Acra can hear WAMC, a noncommercial NPR station originating from Albany, about 30 miles away. "But I've actually never heard anything about my town on WAMC," Joseph-Hunter says.

free103 is now researching its community's needs and considering partnerships with high school, community centers and other educational institutions. "Right now, the local arts community knows about us, and we're collaborating with that group quite well," Joseph-Hunter says. "I think this would be a way for us to engage people who aren't already integrated into the arts."

The would-be broadcaster has already found support among its community of artists and nearby residents, which proved crucial to completing its FCC application. Individual donors stepped forward to help free103 pay for the necessary legal and technical assistance, and Public Radio Capital, a member of Radio for People, provided a key matching grant. Such collaboration demonstrates both an appetite for local, community-focused radio and the strength of the nationwide support network for launching such stations.

Potential nonprofit broadcasters often err in expecting "that you really need all this expertise to apply," says Joseph-Hunter, "when instead what you need is money to hire the people with the expertise."

These three applicants — as well as hundreds of others from all over the country — must now wait several years as their applications trickle through FCC pipelines. Because their applications conflict with others, there's no guarantee that they will get their permits. But as they wait, the promise of providing local service and previously unheard programming to their communities is keeping their hopes high.

Meanwhile, these applicants and others across the country have raised their voices in support of low-power FM radio. A separate class of low-wattage stations licensed by the FCC, LPFMs are another kind of community-based media that can bring diverse local programming to the airwaves.

The FCC has already licensed hundreds of LPFMs around the country. Yet limits imposed by Congress and supported by large corporate broadcasters have prevented low-power broadcasters from reaching some of the country's biggest cities. Legislation now pending in Congress would lift these barriers, potentially expand
ing LPFM to reach many new listeners.

Want to support low-power community broadcasting? Learn more from our friends at the Prometheus Radio Project. Then call or write your representatives in Congress, and tell them you want to hear more radio that reflects your community!

About the author: Mike Janssen served as Project Manager on FMC's Full Power Initiative, recruiting arts and cultural groups to apply for noncommercial stations and assisting applicants throughout the process. He is a freelance writer, editor and leader of media workshops in the Washington, D.C., area. Visit his website at mikejanssen.net.

On May 10, free103point9's efforts to bring a community radio station to Greene and Columbia counties in New York went public with a workshop at the Catskill Community Center in Catskill. (free103point9 is applying for a full-power FM station to serve the community.) From Dharma Dailey, who helped run the workshop:

Volunteers of the forthcoming yet-to-be-named Columbia-Greene community radio station set up a tiny radio station at the Catskill Community Center. Though the signal barely reached to the sidewalk outside the community center, people of all ages and ethnicities took a seat beside an old school desk to take turns interviewing family, friends, and strangers. Radios were strategically placed in the Community Center bathrooms, the Community Center art Gallery, and just outside on the sidewalk. We taped a few questions to the desk to get people going — and go they did! From the time that the parade led by the Catskill Drum Corps landed at the front door of the Center to the end of Second Saturday revels, people took the opportunity to listen to each other. A dad and his daughter sit down facing each other. One playfully begins to “announce” in Spanish. Other Spanish speakers stop on the street. Where is that Spanish coming from? There’s no Spanish radio around here! A crowd gathers around the window. More people migrate to the microphone. Discussion. A public discussion. A long-retired reporter asks an eight year old drum corp drummer, “If you had a radio show what would be on it?” After answering, the drummer asks the reporter, “What brought you to Greene County?” People run out from the gallery, “We just wanted to see who’s talking.” Someone comes out from the bathroom to join the conversation. The music in the my neighbors’ voices tells me they appreciate the opportunity, the excuse, to get acquainted with each other. Here it is, live local radio. Click here for a very short movie about the event. Audio by Kaya Weidman, Dharma Dailey. Photos by Corrine and Dharma Dailey. Editing by Dharma and Michael Truckpile.

The Radia network, Radio Zero and Sirr will host the 2nd edition of the bianual Radio Art Festival RadiaLx in Lisboa, Portugal, from the 20th to the 28th September. RadiaLx 2008 is a biannual radio art festival gathering an international set of groundbreaking artists, instigators and producers, delivering public interventions, performances, workshops, live radio broadcasts, discussions, and conferences.

Initiated from the need to discuss and expand the ideas around radio as an active social enhancer and as an alternative against the retinian paradigms that sorround us, it Intersects multiple approaches and genders to achieve participative and social awareness,

Under the motto "new and forgotten ways of making radio", RadiaLx2008 brings together new and old, allowing different forms of participation to emerge, melt and overlap in virtual and traditional broadcast interaction, redefining radio's own identity and interaction range. The festival includes the following artists Gilles Aubry, Knut Aufermann, Ed Baxter, Xentos Fray Bentos, Mike Cooper, Michael Fischer, Anna Friz, André Gonçalves, Tetsuo Kogawa, Diana McCarty, Patrick Mcginley, Noid, Jay Needham, Paulo Raposo, Ricardo Reis, Pit Schultz, Alexandra Varela, and Sarah Washington.

free103point9 is pleased to host, Voices of America, a participatory Internet radio project that reflects on the media spectacle of the 2008 US Presidential Election through the lens of the Voice of America Radio Network, a US government broadcasting service intended for an international audience. The new site and custom application will be up Aug. 25, 2008 through Nov. 5, 2008. Here's how it will work:

* RECORD up to one minute samples of election coverage on an over-the-air Voice of America station
* UPLOAD and TAG your recordings
* DOWNLOAD from the searchable pool of available recordings
* REMIX the broadcasts and UPLOAD them back to the website
* LISTEN to the recordings and remixes online anytime or to the radio broadcast at the Audacity of Desperation exhibition at the Sea and Space Gallery in Los Angeles on Election Day

http://www.voanews.com
http://desperationexhibition.blogspot.com/
http://www.seaandspace.org/
Voices of America (VoA) is created by Lee Azzarello and Sarah Kanouse. VoA is happy to be a participant in The UnConvention, a project of Art Through Technical Alternatives, Carleton College, Intermedia Arts, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, University of Minnesota Institute for New Media Studies, and the Walker Art Center.

Evidence (Stephan Moore and Scott Smallwood) celebrate the release of their new CD "Receiver" (free103point9 Audio Dispatch 035), created through a residency at Wave Farm, with a re-imagined performance of the original installation. Bring a radio with batteries! A limited number will be provided. Evidence will be joined by the modern dance company The Extra-Sensory Pedestrians, performing a new work, "Boxed Dances."

Description of original project Evidence will attempt to recreate: "Spheres of Influence (working title)" is a performance/installation of both live-performed and pre-recorded sounds being broadcast through a number of radio transmitters all tuned to identical (or nearly-identical) frequencies. The audience is equipped with radio receivers, and then encouraged to explore the points of “indecision” that exist between the various transmitters. In this way, each audience member participates in the composition/editing of the final piece by performing the interplay between our broadcasted material and the indeterminate artifacts of the transmission/reception process inherent in the installation.

Sound artists Stephan Moore and Scott Smallwood began performing as the duo Evidence in 2001. Focusing on the universe of real-world sound, Evidence pours field recordings like water into their compositional and improvisational process, resulting in music that balances between tight organization and unregulated flow. Using recording equipment, laptops, and other electronic devices, Evidence creates music that deals with gradual change, improvised over time, sometimes atmospheric, sometimes pulsating, always texturally striking and unique. Resisting classification into a single genre, Evidence is equally at home performing in experimental venues, clubs, galleries, planetariums, and rooftops.

Aug. 14, 2008: 8 p.m. – 10 p.m.
at Issue Project Room at the (oa) can factory, 232 Third St., Brooklyn, NY
http://www.issueprojectroom.org
Admission: $10

For more information see:
http://www.free103point9.org/events/1957/

From Kevin Poulsen in Wired:

The southern California man who published the radio scanning bible Police Call has passed away. Under the pen name Gene Hughes, Gene Costin became a household word among geeks in the 1970s when he started cataloging the radio frequencies used by various police and fire departments and other agencies, giving hobbyists something to do with the first generation of programmable scanners then hitting the market. I had the privilege of interviewing him for a profile in 2005, when he made the decision to close down Police Call after 41 years.

It was the best day amid the worst years of Gene Hughes' life. He was 13 years old and seeking escape from the loneliness of a Los Angeles foster home by playing with an AM radio his uncle had mailed him. Tuning around the dial, he picked up something different from the dance hall music and campy radio dramas that normally spilled from the tinny speaker -- something unexpectedly genuine. "I suddenly heard strange voices, women broadcasting addresses and numeric codes," he recalls.

He quickly figured out that he'd somehow tuned into Los Angeles Police Department dispatchers crisply directing the city's black-and-white police cars to real robberies, domestic disturbances and traffic accidents throughout the City of Angels.

That was 1940, nearly a half-century before shows like Cops would turn live police action into mass entertainment. And what might have sounded to someone else's ears like unwanted interference from a city transmitter, was to Hughes the pulsing music of an invisible world. He bought a map and started marking out the police calls with a pencil. As he moved into adulthood, his interest only increased, and he invested in specialized radio receivers. "If they had the word, I guess you'd have called me a nerd," says Hughes.

But that nerdiness paid off. In 1964, in a bet with his wife, Hughes took all the information he'd accumulated -- call signs, frequencies and codes for police, fire, paramedics and other agencies -- and rolled it up into a 16-page manual titled Police Call.

It was the start of something big. Under Hughes' direction, Police Call would eventually expand into nine regional volumes covering the entire continental United States, with a peak circulation of a half-million copies. Updated annually, it would sell countless thousands of radio scanners and play a crucial role in incubating and growing the hobby of radio monitoring, which traces a line from the cop watchers of the 1970s to the railfans of the '90s and the NASCAR dads of today.

Along the way, Police Call would help spawn local and national clubs and organizations, spark brushfire controversies over information disclosure, and turn Gene Hughes -- a pen name -- into a household word among scanner buffs and anyone who spent too much time at Radio Shack when they were kids.

Scanner buffs are posting memories to Costin's online tribute page.

Performances from: Damian Catera, Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson, The Dust Dive & Latitude Longitude, Joshua Fried & Todd Merrell, Tianna Kennedy, LoVid with Howard Huang, Tom Roe, and others at 7:30 p.m. Thu. Aug. 7 at the New Museum in Manhattan. Attendees will receive a complimentary copy of Radio Action III with admission. Join free103point9, in collaboration with Radio Web MACBA, Barbara Held and Pilar Subirá, for a live performance celebrating Radio Action III, an online radio program produced for RWM and the next free103point9 Audio Dispatch CD Release. Radio Action III features 12 five-minute soundworks conceptually tied to the idea of "radio" as an instrument or theme, composed by free103point9 transmission artists working in collaborative teams. RWM is a radio-phonic project on the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) website that explores the possibilities of the internet and radio as spaces of synthesis and exhibition. 7:30-9:30 p.m. Live web stream at www.free103point9.org. CD cover photo by David LaSpina.

Radio Action III track listing:
01 The Dust Dive & Latitude/Longitude, "PARTY COVE"
02 radio_ruido and ben owen, "Dandelions (c/clocked)"
03 LoVid & Michelle Rosenberg, in collaboration with Howard Huang, "Ring in the New"
04 Tom Roe & Scanner, "Airscape"
05 Damian Catera, "deComposition USA"
06 Joshua Fried & Todd Merrell, "Pistol Shrimp"
07 neuroTransmitter, "Chronicle"
08 Anna Friz & Tianna Kennedy, "When radios sleep what dreams may come"
09 Michelle Nagai, in collaboration with Kenta Nagai, "Sleep Radio"
10 Melissa Dubbin & Aaron S. Davidson, "You Love Me Truly"
11 31 Down & Matt Bua, "Wireless Electric Chair"
12 Alexis Bhagat & Sophea Lerner, ".00011574 Hz"

Latitude/Longitude and The Dust Dive collaborate on "Party Cove" at Campfire Sounds 2008 at the city of Hudson's Waterfront Park Sat., July 26, 2008. Video from Slink Moss.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bfYsd2RVF8&hl=en&fs=1]

free103point9 is pleased to announce that Max Goldfarb has joined the free103point9 Transmission Artists. (Pictured: Ambulant Tranceivers (2008) in "Off The Grid," Neuberger Museum of Art. Photos: Left: David La Spina; Center: Max Goldfarb; Right: David La Spina.)

free103point9 works with this core group of 21 artists pioneering transmission as a medium for creative expression. This genre includes experimental practices in radio art, video art, light sculpture, and installation and performance utilizing the electromagnetic spectrum. Goldfarb's work is featured in two current and upcoming free103point9 projects: Ambulant Transceivers (2008) is on view in "Off The Grid" at Neuberger Museum of Art through September 14, 2008; and M49, a retrofit radio-utility truck (a Grumman Kurbmaster stepvan), which has been outfitted for mobile radio transmission and other additional applications will be presented in Mobile49 + free103point9 = Radio Walk at Denniston Hill on August 23, 2008.

The work of Max Goldfarb intersects many disciplines. His public works projects enjoin radio transmissions with infrastructures of the built environment, improvised radio-electronic objects, and performative architecture. Goldfarb's situational interventions explore conceptual properties of interference with strategies of unpredictability. His ongoing project M49, centers around a radio-utility studio housed inside a converted emergency vehicle, drawing together many facets Goldfarb's creative project.

Goldfarb graduated from the MIT Visual Studies Program in 2006 and currently teaches at Parsons. Goldfarb has exhibited his work at such venues as the SculptureCenter, NY; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; Western Front, Vancouver, B.C.; Mjellby Art Center, Halmstad. Sweden; Art & Idea, Mexico City; De Stadgalerij, NL; and Fringe Exhibitions Space, Los Angeles, CA. His work will be included in the upcoming exhibit, Burocrazy at 99 Proyecto in Guatemala, curated by Ivan Navarro.

M49 Studio inventory: ...Video camera dashboard mount, Solar charging units, Enamel line striping mechanism, UHF scanners, Teakwood, NiCad rechargeable batteries, Quickrete, Bicycle-powered generator, Wire snips, PFD, Conductive thread, Urethane mold, Infrared laser, Resistors, Vacuum forms, Breadboard, Vintage first aid kits, Inverter, Telekey/lamp attachment, Firewood, Flagpole, Marine deep-cycle battery, Jumper cables, Oars, Hot glue, Magnifying glass, RC auto chassis, Greenwich SW radio frequency guide, Woodstove, Transformer, Pencil sharpener, Desktop microphone, Chemical disaster training suit, Mining helmet, Electrolytic capacitors, Chalkboard, Surveying equipment, Automobile compass, Torsion clamp, Amplifier, Velcro, QSL album, Custom Argonaut work suit, Glass cutter, Polyethylene tarp, LP transmitter, Tow strap, Nickel plated clippers, Soldering iron, Colored pencils, Inflatable outboard, Multi-band transceiver, Table saw, Post hole digger, Pup tent, Trebuchet. Coaxial cable, Ultracal, Trip sensor circuits, Screwdrivers, Emergency beacon, Transistors….

Click on http://www.free103point9.org/artists/991/ for more information about Goldfarb.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE4N5oeDEFw&hl=en&fs=1]


Benjamin Cohen, Dylan J. Gauthier, and Stephan von Muehlen's "Mare Liberum" is in free103point9's "Off the Grid" show up through September at the Neuberger Museum in Westchester County, New York. This workshop, building the boat, was filmed over the course of a single day at the Neuberger Museum, in Purchase, New York. Part of a series of workshops and performances for the exhibition "Off the Grid" April 2, 2008 at the Museum. "Off The Grid" features contemporary works which formally and/or conceptually challenge conventional and commercial infrastructures. Installations include works by Matt Bua; Brett Bloom; Benjamin Cohen, Dylan J. Gauthier, and Stephan von Muehlen; EcoArtTech: Christine Nadir and Cary Peppermint; eteam; Max Goldfarb; Louis Hock; Nina Katchadourian; Kristin Lucas; Joe McKay; Trevor Paglen; Seth Weiner; and Bart Woodstrup.

For more information see:
http://free103point9.org/events/1678/

Campfire Sounds is an annual avant folk festival organized by free103point9. "Free folk" bands perform each year at an upstate New York venue. This year "Campfire Sounds" is this Saturday, July 26, from 4-8 p.m. at Hudson Waterfront Park, with free admission and avant folk performances from MV & EE with The Golden Road, Latitude/Longitude, The Dust Dive, and Samara Lubelski. The Dust Dive and Latitude/Longitude open the show with a collaborative set, performing their songs in broader arrangements, including drums. This year's show is Part of City of Hudson Summer Concert Series, eight shows with a range of sites and sounds from May 31 to September 6 in Hudson, New York. Pictured above: Latitude/Longitude during Campfire Sounds 2006, photo by David La Spina.

Free Speech Radio News has been given notice by the financially-strapped Pacifica Foundation that it will be cutting its funding by more than $13,100 a month – effective immediately. FSRN's is soliciting donations to replace the funds. Click here for more information.

From A-Infos Radio Project:

We've been limping along on limited bandwidth and resources for 12 years now. That's right, we've been online since 1996 which makes us 12 years old this year. We were the first project of it's kind on the internet and our model of open media inspired the developers of the original Seattle Indymedia, as well as other participatory media projects on the internet.

Yes, we've had spotty service in recent years and (as the main administrator of the project) allow me to apologize for that. However, our new site has been designed to remedy many of the problems that plagued our project in the past. This isn't to say that we will now be prompt about responding to people's e-mails -- after all, there are three people working on this project for free and we all have lives-- what I am saying is the new site will be vastly more reliable and give people less cause to contact us.

Now for the good news: We have new powerful servers! Tim Pozar (http://www.lns.com/) of Bay Area Wireless Network fame has helped provide us with ridiculous amounts of bandwidth from one of the most reliable network providers in the country! And I have spent the last couple months finishing a completely rewritten update to the
software that runs www.radio4all.net! This all means that the A-Infos Radio
Project is getting a new lease on life.

Special thanks are due to David Josephson (http://www.josephson.com/) for setting up our new equipment, and for making contact with Tim Pozar and negotiating for our new internet connection.

The New Software:

I will not get into excessive technical details regarding the new software, but I will tell you that this version of the Radio Project software is a complete rewrite from the ground up. It is faster and more efficient. It is more secure and extensive measures have been taken to protect the site from spammers and e-mail harvesters while not inconveniencing our users with annoying anti-spam devices. The site's security has been designed to be effective against actual security threats while being transparent to legitimate users.

Searching and browsing for programs has been much improved, with new ways to find programs: by popularity (top 300 downloads), by license, and by content advisory. The latter is particularly useful for radio stations in light of the draconian measures taken by the FCC against U.S. stations who violate the "7 dirty words" or "safe-harbor" rules. Browsing programs by content advisory should make finding programs suitable for radio more convenient.

Other improvements include a better topic directory and easier topic categorization, the addition of creative commons license support (including public domain dedication, and sampling-specific licenses), better support for international characters, and many other improvements.

In closing, we're looking forward to a long future for the A-Infos Radio Project and we hope you will continue to support us and, most importantly, use our project. And I want to remind you to support us financially or in other ways if you can. This is a free service that has been maintained by volunteer labor for over a decade, but we
still need your help to pay the bills. So, please visit our support page
to find out how you can help: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/support/

From Marisa Olson in Rhizome:

You may have read about free103point9 here, before. At Rhizome, we maintain a high esteem for this pioneering organization serving the field of "transmission arts," and we've fortunately been able to collaborate with them on projects in the past. In many ways, our missions overlap, as our organizations grew out of a desire to support emergent and often immaterial practices. Free103point9's founders situate their vision of the field in an evolutionary framework, looking at how broadcasting and transmission grew out of shared trajectories with net art, video art, mail art, and other creative forms of distributed communication. The organization frequently teams up with other institutions to take this message on the road and increase exposure for the work of transmission artists. Their newest collaborative project is both a show and a recording, co-presented by the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, in their Radio Web program (RWM). This curatorial initiative "is a radio-phonic project from the MACBA's website that explores the possibilities of the internet and radio as spaces of synthesis and exhibition." This self-reflexive approach to presentation is also inherent in the free103point9 show, entitled "Radio Action III," which takes up "radio" as both its theme and its delivery vehicle. Fifteen artists collaborate to present five-minute tracks inspired by this important device, and a bit of surfing of the artists' profiles on free103point9 will assure you of their diversity, ranging from site-specific sound manipulation to interventionist broadcasts. The recordings are the newest CD to be released in free103point9's Dispatch series and the album will premiere at an event at the New Museum of Contemporary Art on August 7th. Meanwhile, it will be streaming online at RWM from June 18 - August 30. Be sure to tune-in. (CD cover photo by David La Spina.)

From Armin Medosch in The Next Layer:

The exhibition "Waves" is part of a long term research project which puts analogue and electromagnetic waves into the centre of its investigation. "Waves" uses the process of making an exhibition as a form of practice based research. The overall research aim is to develop a bottom-up, materialistic theory of media art. It is proposed that waves are a very important material of study for the development of a theory of media art, as they are a 'principle material' which every artist who works in the field of media art needs to consider and know about. Waves constitute a material layer without which media art is impossible and whose study therefore is also important for any theoretic effort.

Both sight and sound are based on waves, so that waves have shaped us humans evolutionary, our senses have developed in a process of adaption to that. Analogue and electromagnetic waves are the basic elements or materials for many artistic practices and social applications, ranging from sound (modulations of air waves which can be receieved by the ear drum), to light (electromagnetic waves in the TerraHertz range) and electromagnetic waves (which exist naturally and manmade).

Electromagnetism is one of the four basic fources in physics. Since roughly 100 years em waves have been used for signal transfers, radio, tv and remote actions such as alarm systems, radar, sensing, and many other things. em waves modulated band processed by analogue devices or computers form now one of the major components of our communications culture (from the mobiler phone to that thing parking attendants use to type in fines). Considering that, in this sequence, human culture has become increasingly electric, electromagnetic, and, based on that, digital, the 'waves' are getting very little attention 'in their own right' which is what this project is addressing.

Waves@Dortmund 2008 was realised in a collaboration and partnership between HMKV, RIXC and Ars Electronica as part of Szene-Österreich, an event in spring 2008 where Austrian artists were presented in the Ruhr Valley area.

From Tara Parker-Pope in The New York Times:

Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.” Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.

From Bornina Storm in South Philly Biennial:

April Glaser left home at age 16 to work with left high school and worked with a group of activists in Nashville, Tennessee to build the area's only public access, independent radio station, Radio Free Nashville. It was connected to her home. She soon left for Philly to work with Prometheus Radio Project, to build low-power community radio stations and help with the fight against media consolidation. She has a precocious way of getting herself involved with some of the most interesting, community based, independently minded projects and people. She is currently a student of philosophy and spent last summer living in Michigan on a boat working with FOUND magazine. and plans on spending this summer in the Catskills working on projects with free103point9. She will be setting up a 'pirate' radio station at the Biennial to broadcast music and interviews. Listeners can tune in for a few blocks radius, while she will have radio hats so visitors and artists can listen live. She is very informative and wants everyone to know that she welcomes questions on broadcasting, media consolidation, and the wavy spectrum. Above please check out a video Prometheus projects made of their Nashville, Tennessee project, of which April was involved.