[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.

From Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing:

Danny sez, "A Microsoft spokesperson told CNet today that 'Microsoft included technologies in Windows based on rules set forth by the (Federal Communications Commission). As part of these regulations, Windows Media Center fully adheres to the flags used by broadcasters and content owners to determine how their content is distributed and consumed.' Do they really mean that they're obeying the broadcast flag that courts and Congress rejected as being executive overreach by the FCC? The ones they have no obligation to follow?" This is about the defunct "Broadcast Flag," an illegal proposal to have the FCC regulate devices (PCs, set-top boxes, etc) so that they'll only include approved technologies that the entertainment industry likes. The Second Circuit ruled that the FCC couldn't make these rules. But Microsoft's devices are following the rules anyway, refusing to allow you to record your favorite TV shows with your Windows PC if the broadcaster has marked them as "no record."

From David Pescovitz in Boing Boing:

New research shows that the electromagnetic signals emanating from mobile phones can alter your brainwaves. Indeed, the latest studies suggest that mobile phone transmissions can even affect behavior. In one study, scientists from the Swinburne University of Technology monitored the brainwaves of folks with Nokia phones, er, strapped to their heads. They noticed that the cell phone transmissions boosted alpha waves. In a separate experiment, researchers from the Loughborough University Sleep Research Centre observed that sleep-deprived subjects with phones on their heads showed a dampening of delta waves that are markers of sleep. For hours after the phones were turned off, the test subjects exhibited difficulty falling asleep. From Scientific American:

Although this research shows that cell phone transmissions can affect a person's brainwaves with persistent effects on behavior, (Loughborough University's James) Horne does not feel there is any need for concern that cell phones are damaging. The arousal effects the researchers measured are equivalent to about half a cup of coffee, and many other factors in a person's surroundings will affect a night's sleep as much or more than cell phone transmissions.

"The significance of the research," he explained, is that although the cell phone power is low, "electromagnetic radiation can nevertheless have an effect on mental behavior when transmitting at the proper frequency." He finds this fact especially remarkable when considering that everyone is surrounded by electromagnetic clutter radiating from all kinds of electronic devices in our modern world. Cell phones in talk mode seem to be particularly well-tuned to frequencies that affect brainwave activity. "The results show sensitivity to low-level radiation to a subtle degree. These findings open the door by a crack for more research to follow. One only wonders if with different doses, durations, or other devices, would there be greater effects?"

Hudson's Slink Moss has put together the Hudson Summer Concert Series, and free103point9 is co-sponsoring the series of eight free shows this summer in parks in the city of Hudson, New York. Slink writes, "A range of sites and sounds starting May 31 at the Waterfront and ending September 6 at the Fountain Park at 7th Street. Experimental. Rock. Jazz. Circus. Kids Rock. Reggae. Punk. Films. Performance. Fun. Diversity!" about the series. free103point9 will attempt to air each show live on free103point9 Online Radio. Here are the dates and performers:

*May 31: Bunnybrains, Family of Love, Franklin Mint, Hexual Ceiling, Neg-Fi, Norman Douglas, Tom Roe, and Slink Moss Orchestra.

*June 14: LoVid presents "Wirefull Flags" multi-media event after the fireworks.

*June 28: Mambo KiKongo, and DJ Tom Roe.

*July 12: J+H Projections (Bill Morrison and Laurie Olinder of Ridge Theater) plus live drums.

*July 26: free103point9's Campfire Sounds with The Dust Dive, Latitude/Longitude, Samara Lubelski, and MV & EE with the Golden Road.

*Aug. 9: Big Blue Big Band.

*Aug. 23: Bindlestiff Circus; The Ping Pongs, and Wolfman Jason.

*Sept. 6: The Dangling Success.

free103point9 Online Radio Top 40 for May 2008

1. The Roy Campbell Ensemble, Akhenaten Suite (Aum Fidelity)
2. Tall Firs, Too Old To Die Young (Ecstatic Peace)
3. civyiu kkliu + ilya monosov, cartolina postale (Winds Measure Recordings)
4. The Beige Channel, Enjoy Victoria Bay! (Happy New Year Recordings)
5. Rob Brown Ensemble, Crown Trunk Root Funk (Aum Fidelity)
6. Annea Lockwood, A Sound Map of the Danube (Lovely Music, Ltd.)
7. Sic Alps, A Long Way Around To a Shortcut (Animal Disguise)
8. Robert Ashley, Concrete (Lovely Music, Ltd.)
9. Jason Willet, The Sounds of Megaphone Unlimited (mT6records.com
With Jad Fair, Eye Yamatsuka, and others.
10. Various artists, Infinite Limbs (Infinite Limbs)
Family of Love, Teeth Mountain, and others.
11. autistic daughters, uneasy flowers (Kranky)
12. critikal, graphorrea (zeromoon.com)
13. Kenneth Gaburo, Maledetto Antiphony VIII (Pogus Productions)
14. asher-ubeboet, cell memory (Winds Measure Recordings)
15. Cristian Amigo, Kingdom of Jones (innova)
16. Radio Ruido, "False Rosetta" 2x7" (free103point9 Audio Dispatch 032)
17. Simon Wickham-Smith, love & lamenation (Pogus Productions)
18. White Rainbow, Prism of Eternal Now (Kranky)
19. Verdun, Two Archipelagos LP (eyland.org)
20. Latitude/Longitude, "Solar Filters/Mother Evening" 7" (free103point9 Audio Dispatch 031)
21. Jeff Martin + Evan Shaw, Piano Music (Barnyard Records)
22. Frank Rothkamm, just 3 organs (just.3.organs.frank.rothamm.com)
23. Barnyard Drama, I'm a Nawg (Barnyard Records)
24. Lori Freedman & Scott Thompson, Plumb (Barnyard Records)
25. Tatsuya Nakatani, Primal Communication (H&H)
26. Jeff Martin + Colin Fisher, Little Man on thr Boat (Barnyard Records)
27. Cloudland Canyons, Silver Tongued Sisyphus (Kranky)
28. William Parker + Hamid Drake, First Communion/Piercing the Veil 2xCD (Aum Fidelity)
29. Temperatures, Ymir LP (Heat Retention)
30. Mt. Wilson Repeater (Eastern Fiction)
31. Bruce Eisenbeil Sextet, Inner Constellation (Nemu)
Bruce Eisenbeil + Jean Cook + Nate Wooley + Aaron Ali Shaikh + Tom Abbs + Nasheet Waits.
32. Faking Trains, Instructions (Faking Trains)
33. Scott Smallwood, Electrotherapy (Deep Listening)
34. David Watson, Fingering an Idea (XI Records)
35. Stars Like Fleas, The Ken Burns Effect (Talitres)
36. Mike Wexler, Sun Wheel (Amish)
37. David S. Ware Quartet, Renunciation (Aum Fidelity)
38. Jeff Arnal + Dietrich Eichmann, LP (Broken Research)
39. Pauline Oliveros + Miya Masaoka, Koto Accordion (Deep Listening)
40. Theo Angell, Dearly Beloved (Amish)
Scott Smallwood, Desert Winds: Six Windblown Sound Pieces and Other Works (Deep Listening)
To submit CDs, LPs, CSs, etc. for consideration of airplay on free103point9 Online Radio, mail to:
free103point9
5622 Route 23
Acra, NY 12405

From Jose Fritz in Arcane Radio Trivia:

It is unimaginable now, but in the early days of broadcasting, it was possible to operate a legal broadcast from a moving vehicle. Not a relay to a stationary transmitter, but to originate programming, perhaps even while steering.In 1919 I find the earliest reference to a license to broadcast from a car. Alfred H. Grebe broadcasted from both cars and boats with the call letters WGMU. Grebe manufactured radios. the purpose of the traveling radio show was of course... to sell them. they were nice radios, usually a chassis of Bakelite and/or nice hardwood like walnut. Grebe was from Richmond Hill, NY, born in 1895. He also founded WAHG, WBOQ, and other less formal stations right out of his factory in Queens.

His mobile station used a 6-wire flat top antenna but it was hardwired to the frame and body of the car! It operated at 150 meters. He did observe the the spark plugs of the other motor vehicles caused interference even then. In advertisements he called it the grebe Auto Radiophone. Grebe said in a Radio Amateur News article:

"The auto-radio-phone is entirely practical, and the near future should bring extensive developments along these lines..."

In the late 1920s Jay W. Peters was broadcasting in Inglewood, CA as 1470 KGGM. Then in 1927 he loaded his transmitter with a collapsible antenna and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I've also seen images with a rig attached to a bus! He too was demonstrating radio equipment that he was trying to sell. Peters traveled the Southwest doing demos. In 1928, he sold the license to the New Mexico Broadcasting Company. In 1928 he moved to a terrestrial stationary radio license. He went to Reno and tried to start another station near Blanch Field Airport in an Elks lodge. He applied for a license, and got the calls KOH. it was the first commercial station in Reno.

free103point9 is mapping a genealogy of artists, works, questions, and definitions in support of the genre "transmission arts." Artists are encouraged to self-identify their work within the context of transmission art practices. The resulting resources online and at the Wave Farm Study Center will provide extensive reference materials to artists, curators, students, and academics researching contemporary and historical practices in Media Art and Experimental Sound with respects to the topic of transmission. Click here to add your transmission art work to the archive.

From Matthew Lasar in Ars Technica:

National Public Radio continues to move aggressively against Federal Communications Commission proposals that would, if not allow nonprofits to build more Low Power FM stations (LPFM), at least let existing ones survive the intrusion of new full power neighbors. NPR is quite plain about the matter in its FCC filings: it stands opposed to the Low Power exceptions, even though they might help keep FM offerings diverse. NPR charges that the FCC is putting feel-good policies ahead of the laws of physics.

"The laws of physics have not changed, and a system of full power broadcast stations serves many more listeners with less interference compared to low power broadcasting," NPR told the FCC this month. "While LPFM stations may advance the interests of localism and diversity, the Commission cannot assume that LPFM is inherently
better than full power service."

NPR opposes proposals to strengthen rules allowing LPFMs to obtain channel interference waivers when an "encroaching" full power station arrives on the scene. And the broadcaster decidedly dislikes measures that would require new full power signals to offer technical and even financial help to an LPFM that they've suddenly squatted on (or squatted next to).

This is a serious issue, because over the last decade the NPR service has expanded from 635 to 800 affiliated stations. Public radio's stance on this puts it at odds with practically every media reform group in the country. But first, let's recap the history of this bitter struggle, which goes back almost a decade.

After years of highly-publicized battles between pirate radio stations and the FCC, agency Chair William Kennard's Commission in 2000 set up some rules to establish two classes of LFPMs: an LP100 class with a maximum of 100 watts of power and an LP10 class with a limit of ten watts. License applicants for this new service had to honor various limits: nonprofit status and a "second adjacent" rule which meant that an LPFM could not set itself up within two channel notches of a full power station.

The FCC established that restraint in defiance of National Public Radio and the National Association of Broadcasters. Both entities demanded that a three notch No Man's Land be thrown up around a full power signal. NPR pursued this goal with particular vigor, going so far as to suggest that the FCC disregarded laboratory tests that showed that LPFM stations without third adjacent restrictions would interfere with its member stations. Nonetheless, the agency stood these accusations down. It concluded that "imposition of a third-adjacent channel separation requirement would restrict unnecessarily the number of LPFM stations that could be authorized."

So the big guys raised hell and asked Congress to stomp the FCC's 2000 Order. Capitol Hill complied with a rider to a District of Columbia appropriations bill that instructed the FCC to put that third adjacent rule in there, despite the FCC's own conclusions.

This was a big setback for LPFM, because it meant that significantly fewer such stations could be licensed in more densely-populated areas. As the FCC later conceded, various "otherwise technically grantable applications" became "short spaced," prompting "the eventual dismissal of those applications." The agency subsequently canceled 17 licenses and almost 100 construction permits "for failure of the holder to satisfy certain procedural and/or technical requirements."

The DC Congressional rider did contain one silver lining. It authorized the FCC to commission an engineering study on the third adjacent problem, which the government did. The wheels of agency process moved slowly, but they moved. A little over two years later the Mitre Corporation submitted a report on the second/third adjacent problem, from which the FCC once again drew the conclusion that the third adjacent rule was not necessary.

Then, on December 11th of last year, the FCC enacted an Order and Proposed Rulemaking asking Congress to permit it to re-establish that second adjacent guideline. Mike Doyle (D-PA) in the House has sponsored such a bill, as has Maria Cantwell (D-WA) in the Senate.

The Commission's December 11th Order also asked for comment on other proposals to help keep afloat the estimated 809 LPFMs broadcasting in the United States. These include more firmly establishing procedures for second adjacent waivers. At present, if a new full power station shows up too close to an LPFM, agency practice has been to consider a waiver if the smaller signal suddenly finds itself afoul of the second adjacent limit. The FCC now wants to turn that occasional practice into a rule, but it also wants guidance on under what circumstances it should grant such leeway. And the Commission wants public wisdom on whether its waiver procedures should be expanded to first and even co-adjacent situations.

Second (and NPR truly hates this idea), the FCC wants to know if the "encroaching" full-service station should be required to offer technical assistance and even financial help to an LPFM that can demonstrate full power interference. This might include paying for filtering technology and other interference aides. And the agency thinks that a full power station should give an LPFM advance notice if the former anticipates interference with the latter.

"It should also be required to cooperate in good faith with the LPFM station in developing the best technical approach," the Commission contends, "including a possible LPFM site relocation, to ameliorate the interference and/or displacement impact of its proposal." In addition, the FCC proposes to raise standards for the kinds of LPFMs that get this sort of help, and seems to be leaning towards codifying these new policies only for stations that provide eight hours of local programming on a daily basis.

Finally, the FCC proposes to use contouring methodology to license new LPFM stations. Contour measurement is a more flexible way of assessing the possible interference of a broadcast signal. It takes into account mountainous and watery areas, therefore offering station applicants a wider range of "new licensing opportunities," as the FCC puts it.

On April 7, a medium-sized platoon of public interest groups and radio stations filed a 23-page statement on behalf of these proposals. They included the usual suspects: Prometheus Radio, Free Press, Benton, Future of Music, and Reclaim the Media, plus quite a few parties you don't come across very often, such as the Forest Hills School District of Cincinnati, Ohio. These 46 groups enthusiastically endorsed the FCC's suggestions.

"Low power radio stations are governed and operated by community based organizations with limited resources," they wrote. "It is only fair, then, that full-power stations that choose to move into the low power radio's community must provide technical and financial assistance to assist the low power station in resolving interference or in its move to a new channel."

In addition, the filing took on the delicate issue of FM translators, which NPR affiliated stations rely on heavily to expand their audience reach. Prometheus wants to limit the number of translators. No entity, Prometheus et al says, should be able to own more than ten translators in the biggest 303 Arbitron measured markets "on a basis that is primary to an LPFM station that pledges to provide local originated programming." In addition, LPFMs should not be able to convert to translators.

Needless to say, NPR sees these matters very differently, and was not afraid to be blunt about its perspective in its filing, submitted the same day as Prometheus. When Congress created the Low Power FM service, NPR's comment argues, it intended these stations to broadcast "where full power stations could not." Thus the Commissio
n should understand LPFM stations as "secondary to full power stations," NPR writes.

From this point of departure, practically everything that the FCC recommended in its December 2007 Order becomes illegitimate in NPR's eyes, ignoring "longstanding policy determination that full power service is the most efficient use of broadcast spectrum." If an LPFM wants a second adjacent waiver, it must first "resolve all actual interference complaints," NPR insists, and prove that "other factors" have not caused the problem. But it should get no help from the encroaching full power station in question: "The Commission has no place demanding that one NCE [Non-Commercial Educational] station reallocate its scarce resources to another, unrelated one, no matter how deserving the Commission believes the latter to be."

And as for notifying an LPFM of impending signal interference, NPR says that's not an All Things Considered broadcasters' job. "If the Commission perceives a special need to alert LPFM stations to potentially significant Commission actions or provide other accommodation, the Commission itself should take on those tasks." In a more recent filing, submitted to the FCC on April 21, NPR also opposed the ten translator limit.

In a sense, NPR has traveled full circle on this matter. In 2000 it protested imagined signal interference from LPFMs. Now it insists that real interference from its affiliates' signals should be someone else's problem.

In its FCC comments, National Public Radio claims that it "continues to support the LPFM service and the Commission's efforts to ensure that it remain true to its original ideal." But a detailed examination of public radio's stance on LPFM will lead some to a different impression. "To the extent the Commission is motivated by the desire to prevent the loss of LPFM stations," NPR writes in the same statement, "we also regret the community's loss of a valued public service, but risk is inherent in the secondary nature of the LPFM service."

Perhaps, then, NPR sees LPFM as a lesser species that, with time, will be driven to deserved extinction. That is, if the Federal Communications Commission does not enact rules that thwart the survival of the fittest.

May 8, 2008: 10 p.m. – May 11, 2008: 1 a.m.
at Ontological Theater, St. Mark's Church, 131 E. 10th St., Manhattan, NY
http://www.ontological.com/

Streamed live on free103point9 Online Radio. Audio and video at www.free103point9.org

Noise! is a sound performance festival started in 2005. free103point9 curates for the second year. Each year the "Incubator" program at Ontological Theater hosts a Noise! festival, a three-night multi-arts event designed to promote interest in new forms of sound art. The festival will feature short compositions and performances by established and emerging artists. Each evening opens with a Radio 4x4 as the audience enters the theater. Radio 4x4 is a free103point9 collaborative radio transmission performance. Four simultaneous audio performances are separately sent through FM transmitters to radios positioned throughout a performance space. Each radio receives only one of the signals, so that the audience becomes an active collaborator in the performance, "mixing" the audio feeds by moving about the space among the four signals. Other artists will perform each evening. Tianna Kennedy, Tom Roe, and Damian Catera will curate each evening.

Thursday, May 8
Curated by Tianna Kennedy.
Opens with Radio 4x4 with Tianna Kennedy + Mark Anderson + Jordi Wheeler + Tyler Nolan.
Lith (Jordi Wheeler)
Diamond Terrifier (featuring Sam Hillmer from the Zs)
Dome Theater (Forrest Gillespie directing "Fucked for Real")

Friday, May 9
Curated by Tom Roe.
Opens with Radio 4x4 with Giancarlo Bracchi + Tom Roe + Slink Moss + Michael Garafalo.
Bunnybrains
Michael Garafalo (Latitude/Longitude )
Giancarlo Bracchi
Tom Roe

Saturday, May 10
Curated by Damian Catera.
Opens with Radio 4x4 with Damian Catera + () + Tom Roe + John Baird.
Skyline
Damian Catera
Andrea Parkins
Curated by Damian Catera

For more information:
http://www.free103point9.org/events/1833/

The new issue of the academic journal Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture is all about community radio, and includes: Kerrie Foxwell, Jacqui Ewart, Susan Forde and Michael Meadows on Australian Community Broadcasting; Stefania Milan on insights into feelings and muses of community radio practitioners; Dickie Wallace with an ethnographic view of the students and community members at a Massachusetts college radio station; Jan Pinseler on the politics of talk on German free radio stations; Özden Cankaya, H.Serhat Güney and M.Emre Köksalan on Turkish radio broadcasts in The Netherlands; and other essays and book reviews.

From Modern Mechanix:

This battery-operated RCA back-pack weighs 53 pounds, including batteries. Antennas for transmitting picture signals and receiving orders from a base station extend from top of pack. Range is about one mile. At rear of camera case is an electronic finder and a microphone for the narrator. From June, 1951 issue of Modern Mechanix.