One poster at the New York Radio Message Board has located WMIR, a 24/7 unlicensced station operating at 100.9-FM in Suffolk County, New York. The station is playing classic rock (with a web stream if you want to listen and aren't on Long Island). Other reports include a Spanish-language stations on 96.1-FM in Bergen County, and 90.5-FM in Passaic County, both in New Jersey. There's also a report of a reggae-formatted station on Long Island at 101.5-FM, and reports of Carribean stations on 95.1-FM, 101.5-FM, and 104.7-FM in the Bronx and Brooklyn.

Conflux is the annual New York City festival where visual and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers and the public gather for four days to explore the physical and psychological landscape of the city.

Highlights emerging artistic and tech-based interpretations of urban life by putting them into practice on the streets in real-time. Invites national and international artists to connect with the diverse communities of New York City and explore the city together. Encourages dialogue to generate new networks and strategies through the convergence of innovative and provocative creative projects. Conflux by definition is interactive, presenting projects that require a participatory audience. Festival events are free and open to the public and include lectures and panels, street games, public walking tours, workshops, tech-enabled expeditions, interactive performance, temporary public art installations and interventions, audio/video projects and more.

The festival will be held again in Brooklyn in 2007. The Williamsburg White Room, a new 2500 sq. ft. gallery space on the south side of Williamsburg, will serve as our Conflux headquarters, with events taking place in and around the gallery.

From Cory Doctorow via Boing Boing:
Adam "Everyware" Greenfield -- a sensible skeptic about radio-frequency ID tags whose writing on the subject is bang-on fascinating -- is presenting the material from his next book, "The City Is Here For You To Use," at NYC's Cooper Union on April 9.

TimeOut New York

Trained Killer
Forget transit cops: A new installation lets you play private eye on the subway.

For all the improvements over the past decade or so, the transit system is still kind of creepy, which makes a new interactive public artwork by the group 31 Down Radio Theater all the more diabolical. With just a swipe of your MetroCard, it puts you in the middle of a murder mystery unfolding in the Canal Street subway.

According to creator Ryan Holsopple, the piece, titled Canal Street Station, consists of a toll-free number you can dial from any of the pay phones there. The voice of one Niki, and archetypally breathy French girl, comes on to say that she's committed a murder and that you need to find her somewhere in the labyrinth of platforms and tunnels connecting the J,M,Z,N,Q,R,W and 6 trains. "Basically, it's a big game," says Holsopple, who adds that depending on where you are, you'll be asked a specific question about the location- maybe for a detail from a nearby mosaic or which train goes to Fresh Pond Road in Queens. You hang up, snoop, and then call back with your answer. I correct, you'll be told where to go with your next call.

Holsopple explains that the technology behind the work involves a server set up to recognize calls coming from the MTA's pay phones. "The system accepts calls from any number," he says, "but it only gives instructions about the mystery when you're dialing from inside the station."

In addition to Niki, you also hear from PI Mike Sharpie, who serves as a combination inner voice and narrator. Holsopple says he doesn't want to give things away, but he did hand us one clue: No matter where you start you're led to the same destination. "I just want people to hear this disembodied voice," he says, "and let their imagination create the imagery around it." -Daniel Derouchie

New York Post Online Edition

SUBWAY SLEUTHS TAKE CLUE LINE
By JEREMY OLSHAN

March 21, 2007 -- Subway riders can dial M - or N, Q, R and W – for murder in an interactive mystery at a Canal Street subway station. The game can be started by calling (877) 679-4283 at any pay phone inside the station between Broadway and Lafayette for clues.

More clues to the murder can be found in the walls and doors of the cavernous tunnels connecting the lines.

"We thought the station really fit the film noir aesthetic," said creator Ryan Holsopple of the arts group 31 Down.

We make money not art

Like probably many people i wouldn't think of using a phone booth anymore but i feel a pang of nostalgia each time i see an old-style one. Many artists have created performances, installations or games around public booth. One of my favourite performances is Sophie Calle's adoption of a phone booth in Greenwich Village back in 1994.

When Paul Auster suggested that the French artist contribute to the improvement of life in New York City, she spent a week sitting on a chair next to a public phone booth in TriBeCa. She replaced the Nynex logos with Have a Nice Day and Enjoy, stocked the booth with snacks, cigs, drinks and flowers, listened to conversations, chatted with people and got comments on the notepad left at the booth.

In the end representatives of the telephone company threw all of Calle's improvements into a trash basket (via).

More recently, Ryan Holsopple launched a public pay phone who-dunnit that invites people to make a toll-free call from any public pay phone in Canal Street Station and solve a murder mystery.

Set in the maze of tiles that make up the station, the Canal Street Station game puts participants in the shoes of a private investigator, as he searches the depths of Canal Street Station for a young French woman that may have committed a murder, or may be a figment of his own imagination.

The game uses a Trixbox server, a phone application platform based on Asterisk™, to collect caller ID from payphones in the Canal Street Subway, and pinpoint where the player is located.

Players are asked one simple riddle that can be solved by referencing a subway map on the platform, the answer has to be entered into the keypad when they hear Niki (alias Tajna Tanovic) say the words, "Canal Street Station."

"If you answer the clue correctly you hear her say, "Great Work Detective!" Niki then tells you a more difficult riddle that takes you to another platform in the station. The riddles become increasingly difficult as you walk the creepy corridors of the Canal Street Subway station finding the answers," explains Ryan Holsopple. "You can start on any payphone, but no matter where you begin you will eventually end up on the same platform in the end of the mystery, when you answer the final question, you are told which train to exit the station on to take you to the last stage of the mystery."

It's not the first time that the artist works with payphones: one project recorded subway Buskers, busker dial up (in collaboration with John Schimmel) and Peter Stuyvesant's Ghost, a self-guided walk through the area of Peter Stuyvesant's farm utilizing pay or cellphones to access soundworks.

I asked Holsopple a few questions about his latest project:

Why payphone? Are you still using them to make phone calls? Were you interested in working with them for some nostalgia-related reason?

I love payphones and with the growing number of mobile phones, it seems that payphones are on their way out, but I feel they are still essential to the makeup of the city.

Payphones in the NYC subway are the only way to communicate with the outside world, so that puts a boundary on users in a piece such as this, which is great when it comes to a game/theater piece.

I also love the nostalgia theme and much of the work that 31 Down does is based in nostalgia and the technology of the past and how it relates to the present.

The theater company centers around the ideas and cliches of the 'Private Investigator', so this became extremely relevant when I started working with Asterisk, which is an open source PBX created by Mark Spencer. Asterisk (and the voyeuristic possibilities that it offers) has a very 'seedy' side to it and seems to me to be the perfect fit for a private investigator obsessed with surveillance an eavesdropping.

I was also interested in a report by the Straphangers about the state of payphones in the NYC subway.

When i first read about your project i immediately thought about some old films noir. Are there movie scenes that influenced the scenario or any other elements of your project?

31 Down's work is heavily influenced by film-noir. In this pay phone mystery, the audience gets to play the character of a private detective, Mike Sharpie. For clues along the mystery, you hear the inner voice of the detective through the phone handset, this convention has a direct relationship to the film-noir voiceover narrative, which I love.

You also hear the voice of a young lady who speaks with a heavy French accent (played by Tajna Tanovic), she may have killed someone in the station and she is leaving mysterious clues for the detective; this device is mostly based on the work of film director Krzysztof Kieslowski (Dekalog), and the use of obsession and voyeurism in his work.

Thanks Ryan!

The work is co-produced by free103point9 Transmission Arts and 31 Down radio theater and will be running until October 31, 2007.

Second Ave. Sagas

Murder at the Canal Street station
Published March 20th, 2007 Arts for Transit, MTA Absurdity

Kill or be killed as you wait endlessly for the Q at Canal Street.

Well, that caught your attention, eh? Someone's been killed at the crowded Canal Street stop? Well, not quite. I'm sad — or happy — to report that no one was murdered at the underground entrance to Chinatown.

The murder is part of an interactive performance by the public artwork troupe 31 Down Radio Theater called Canal Street. The action takes place in labyrinthian tunnels of the Canal Street Station, and you, the detective-cum-straphanger, are supposed to solve the mystery. For $2 — or less — you too can be a New York detective. Time Out New York wrote about this intriguing work last week:

“For all the improvements over the past decade or so, the transit system is still kind of creepy, which makes a new interactive public artwork by the group 31 Down Radio Theater all the more diabolical. With just a swipe of your MetroCard, it puts you in the middle of a murder mystery unfolding in the Canal Street subway.

According to creator Ryan Holsopple, the piece, titled Canal Street Station, consists of a toll-free number you can dial from any of the pay phones there. The voice of one Niki, an archetypally breathy French girl, comes on to say that she's just committed a murder, and that you need to find her somewhere in the labyrinth of platforms and tunnels connecting the J, M, Z, N, Q, R, W and 6 trains. "Basically, it's a big game," says Holsopple, who adds that depending on where you are, you'll be asked a specific question about that location—maybe for a detail from a nearby mosaic or which train goes to Fresh Pond Road in Queens. You hang up, snoop, then call back with your answer. If correct, you'll be told where to go for your next call.”

I love this idea; I can't wait to do it, and a few things leap out at me. First, this game relies on the payphones in the New York City subways. Wait a minute, you might be thinking, do those payphones actually work? Well, about a quarter of them don't work. So part of the game is finding a working payphone at Canal Street. (The other part involves finding one you want to touch. Good luck with that.)

Next, I think this game is best played at rush hour. That Canal Street station is a zoo during the day; why not really go for the "confusing masses of harried commuters" theme that would so enliven the game? You can push against the tide of humanity as you dash from the Brooklyn-bound N/Q platform to the uptown J/M/Z tracks.

So there you have it. You can spend an hour, as the theater troupe suggests, running around Canal Street trying to find out minutiae about the subways in an effort to solve a murder. Test the payphones; test your patience. And have fun. It's the best $2 or Unlimited Ride swipe you'll spend this month.

And who knows: Maybe she would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids and your dog too.

To get started, head to the Canal Street station; pay the fare; find a payphone and dial 1-877-OR-WHAT-31 (1-877-679-4283). Canal Street will be in the Canal Street station until October.

Reuters

Subway murder mystery game a thrill for riders
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - It's the ultimate murder mystery.

A killer is on the loose in the dripping, dank maze of pathways in New York City's Canal Street subway station. It's your job, as a subway rider, to find her.

That is the premise of the 31 Down Radio Theater group's murder mystery game called "Canal Street Station." It was designed as an interactive public art installation but has quickly spread by word-of-mouth to become a popular game for anyone who wants to play a private investigator.

"The station is full of atmosphere and mystery," said its creator Ryan Holsopple.

"Canal Street station is great for that, and they (the players) definitely get put into an old private eye world with dripping and the tiled walls and everything," he added.

For the $2 price of a subway token, players can take part in the murder mystery by calling a toll-free number from any pay phone in the area. An automated server answers the call and plays a recorded message with the player's assignment.

The would-be sleuth must find out where the killer has gone. Clues include anything from determining which train goes to a particular station to finding a character in one of the station's murals.

The player calls back and is given another mission and the game continues. The game could take about an hour if done properly. It is not affiliated with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs the city's subway system.

Holsopple said his goal was to create an interactive game that used both a form of media, a telephone server, and traditional scavenger-hunt clues to move the story forward.

"You can't use cell phones down there," he said, referring to the subway station.

"I wanted to somehow use the media to see the space around us a little differently," Holsopple added in an interview.

He said that finding the clues and returning to the pay phone to key in the answers makes the players true participants in the game.

"You're really solving things, you're really moving the character forward instead of just being told the story."

Actress Tajna Tanovic, who plays the voice of the killer, played the game for the first time.

"I like mystery and I like drama, too," she said, adding it was interesting, challenging and fun.

Holsopple said the response has been particularly good.

It has definitely generated some buzz," he said.

The theater group co-produced the game with the non-profit arts organization free103point9 (free103point9.org). The theater company's Web site (http://31down.org/performances/CanalStreet.html), provides starting instructions for the game which runs through October.

BBC Radio Five

Of course, in New York now, citizens are being invited to solve a murder mystery through a series of clues and working their ways through the subway system. This is a mini adventure, I’m pretty sure there's no real death involved. The creator is Ryan Holstopple, part of the art group 31 Down.

Ron: Hello Ryan.

RH: Hi Ron. How are you?

Ron: Very well thank you. I love interactive mysteries, I think I used to love them anyway. How does this one work?

RH: Basically you show up in the Canal Street subway station in New York City Manhattan of New York City and…

Ron: Down at the bottom of Manhattan. Down where the world trade center used to be?

RH: Exactly. A little bit further north, but in the general vicinity.

So you can call once you go in the turnstiles there are numerous payphones in the station and you can call from any payphone you want to start on, and you are guided through an interactive private detective story, and you answer clues along the way. So you'll get a clue after your first call, you'll hang up and go search the station for the answer and then you will find another payphone and call back in and answer the clue into the keypad with a number sequence or so forth. And then, if you're right, it will say - you're a great detective here's your next clue. If your wrong it will say - your detective died and hang up on you.

Ron: Oh dear! Well look, lets have a listen to one of these clues now.

Thank you for calling Canal Street station, 31 Down's interactive payphone murder mystery. To play canal Street station be in the subway inside the turnstiles anywhere in canal street station. Call from a payphone this 1-800 toll free number. For more information visit 31down.org.

Ron: All right. So that's obviously all we could get to because we weren't calling from within the ring, we weren't calling from within the Subway system.

HP: Exactly, we are using a server that uses caller id information and I've gone through the whole station and selected phone numbers from the payphones in the station and you can only play the game using those numbers. If you call from an outside number, that's the message you get.

Ron: That’s really clever, amazingly clever. So then, how long does it take to actually go through all the clues?

RH: A good player, not during rush hour traffic I'd say can do it in forty-five minutes to an hour. The other night, we had some girls from Jersey play it and they were getting the wrong answers and it took them about two hours to get through the whole thing. But they did it.

Ron: They did do it, I mean they weren’t entirely serious obviously. Do you go down there and do you watch people play it?

RH: I've never watched people play it, but I have a monitoring system that when people solve certain questions right it emails me and if I'm by my computer at home I can see, Oh somebody made it to the third stage, and so I kind of keep a watchful eye on the people playing it that way.

Ron: Is there a prize?

RH: In the end you actually leave the station and I probably shouldn't say this because it will give away the end, but its fun. You actually call me live and I talk to you on the phone in character to give you your final clue.

Ron: Oh great. Couldn't be better. You meet a lot of interesting people that way?

RH: The people are at first shocked that they're actually speaking to somebody live after hearing these voices the whole time and yeah the people are actually pretty fascinating. Like those girls from Jersey City the other night were a lot of fun to talk to about their experience in the end of the mystery. And a lot of people, what they do, is go for a nice ride on the train and people really seem to enjoy it. They go in pairs a lot. There was a group from Berkeley California the other day that went through it and so people seem to be have a good time with it. And on a blog online I read that people were saying that this is a great first date activinty. So, you know, it seems like a great thing for that, which I think is really cool.

Ron: I think you might very well get some shopping groups from Britain, people who come over to New York for the weekend to do their shopping, and may just want to add a in a murder. Give use the website again.

RH: Oh, its 31down.org and its co-produced by free103point9 transmission arts.

Ron: Well there we are, 31 Down

RH: Yeah, a lot of our work is based on the private detective saga and this is a private detective that plays crosswords a lot, so 31 down or 26 across. That’s where the name comes from.

Ron: it sounds to me as if you got more ideas up your sleeve, this isn't going to be a one off.

RH: Oh yeah. Always. This show runs from march until October and we've done a lot of payphone pieces in the past and sound walk using phones so yeah we do have a lot of things up out sleeves.

Ron: It was lovely to talk to you. Thanks so much.

RH: Thank you so much

Ron: Bye

free103point9 transmitted for the first time ten years ago March 7, 1997.

I-Sound, DJ Singe, and other turntablists played to a packed crowd at Chris Coxwell's loft on Hope Street in Williamsburg near the Lorimer "L" train stop in Brooklyn. For the first of many weekends to come, we hoisted an antenna on the two-story building's roof, and sent the sounds to the surrounding streets.

After that, free103point9 set up in the apartment of Greg Anderson and Violet Hopkins, near the Bedford Avenue "L" subway station, and microcast every Sunday with guests such as Matthew Shipp, New Clueless, and Stars of the Lid talking, playing, and transforming the neighborhood's radio. Few folks likely remember those Sunday afternoon shows ­ listeners could tune in from the East River shore to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, between the Williamsburg and Kosciuszko bridges -- that lasted about six months, but they were the building blocks for what was to follow.

Largely blank slates, with little in the way of station identification or DJs talking back just-played records, experimental sounds of all sorts spilled out. The concept of "radio art" was just barely beginning to be explored among the free103point9 collective at that time. Instead the other inspiration behind starting the station was that the radio airwaves were dead zones that needed to be revived. The best way to locally communicate thoughts and new ideas was being wasted by a handful of corporations intent on turning the nation's airwaves into private mints printing billions of dollars, polluting those airwaves as if they were pouring nuclear waste into national parks.

At that point free103point9 was both concerned about the lack of a community art archive, and the community's lack of access to its own airwaves. Over the course of the next several years, free103point9 became both a curated effort to experiment and provide an outlet for a healthy group of experimenters, as well as a community forum for northern Brooklyn.

After six months of a static studio on the Northside, free103point9 moved to a static studio on the Southside of Williamsburg, next to the Williamsburg Bridge. At this point, though, we decided mobile operations would serve our purposes better. In this way, we could set up turntablists on top of the old bike path on top of the Williamsburg Bridge, and have a secluded spectacle (now impossible because of government obsession with "security"). We could hoist antennae on close to 200 different northern Brooklyn rooftops, letting the hosts pick the content, and flyering the listening area a few days before each microcast. Weekend loft parties like the "Brooklyn Music Festival" in Bushwick, or the all-day "Elsewhere" extravaganza from Momenta Gallery could reach more ears. Eventually, we set up microphones and mixers inside living rooms throughout Brooklyn, broadcasting community forums, kids learning about radio, sound art, the audio for video programs, and much more.

We saw the free103point9 transmitter as akin to something in a library, that local residents could "check out" for a few days, enabling them to inform, entertain, provoke, and educate the rest of the community.

At this time in the late 1990s, free103point9 was aligned with thousands of others committing civil disobedience on the nation's airwaves, protesting years of consolidation and lack of regulation from the federal government culminating with the horrendous 1996 Telecommunications Act. Eventually, through a combination of that civil disobedience, court challenges, and intense lobbying, the Federal Communications Commission launched the Low Power FM (LPFM) radio service in January 2000, allowing hundreds of communities around the country to have their own neighborhood radio station.

The LPFM program was opposed by the National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio, and watered down at the last minute by a faked interference claim by the NAB, who lied about the interference that the tiny LPFM stations would commit against the giant corporate stations. Thankfully, that interference claim was eventually debunked by an independent scientific study, but the complete LPFM bills that would really help communities throughout the country are still stuck in the House and Senate commerce committees.

But a bit of a victory was won for community radio, and largely thanks to the protests and efforts of thousands of so-called "pirate radio" stations. These stations aired city council meetings when corporate stations pulled the plug in Santa Clara, California. In San Marcos, Texas, KIND radio had the mayor on explaining what to do during a flood, when the corporate station licensed to the city didn't say a word, just kept airing advertisements aimed at bigger markets elsewhere. The new LPFM stations continue that tradition to this day, a lovely legacy for the pirates of the 1990s.

While some access to the airwaves had been improved slightly, creativity remained stagnant. free103point9 turned to seeing what could be done with the airwaves, how they could be used in interesting, different ways, and how their conventions could be subverted.

So a change for the organization felt natural. With encouragement and assistance from the free103point9 community at large, and generous grants from the New York State Council for the Arts, and Experimental Television Center, free103point9 shifted from artist collective to nonprofit organization in 2002, employing the term "Transmission Arts" as an umbrella for our interactions with airwaves.

"Transmission Arts" unite a community of artists and audiences interested in experimental radio ideas and tools. Transmission practices harness, occupy and/or respond to the airwaves that surround us. We are excited that the term is becoming part of the educational canon.

One of the first programs free103point9 initiated at this point is called Tune (In))). The original idea came in the early 1990s in Tampa, Florida, when some of the folks later involved with free103point9 were starting a station called 87X. At the time, the local police were using a noise ordinance to shut down young people's raves. Chuck ("Gutz") Stephens proposed a "silent rave," with the music broadcast via FM, and listeners wearing headphones. The idea didn't go over that well with the raves (they liked to "feel" the bass), but we thought about it more, and decided to expand it to five or six stations at the same time and give listeners a real idea of what is on the radio and what could be on the radio. We have since put on Tune (In)))'s at the NY Center for Media Art, The Kitchen, the Santa Fe Art Institute, free103point9 Project Space, and free103point9 Wave Farm. (The next one is scheduled for July 7 at Wave Farm.)

free103point9 now represents, assists, and supports 21 different artists who all use radio somehow in their work. They include 31 Down, Alexis Bhagat, Matt Bua, Damian Catera, Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson, The Dust Dive, Joshua Fried, Anna Friz, Tianna Kennedy, Latitude/Longitude, Sophea Lerner, LoVid, Todd Merrell, Matt Mikas, Michelle Nagai, neuroTransmitter, ben owen, Radio Ruido, Tom Roe, Michelle Rosenberg, and Scanner.

Proudly, over the last ten years, we have presented the work of hundreds of artists to international audiences in a wide scope of contexts. Our programs have been presented in partnership with exciting and influential institutions such as Anthology Film Archives, NY; Art in General, NY; Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Electronic Arts Intermix, NY; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Hallwalls, Buffalo; Hogar Collection, Brooklyn; LMCC, NY; The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; The New Museum for Contemporary Art, NY; NAMAC; Black & White Gallery,NY; The Ontological Theatre, NY; PERFORMA, NY; Rhizome, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and White Box, NY among numerous others. From 2000 to recently the free103point9 Gallery/free103point9 Project Space in South Williamsburg, B
rooklyn provided a special place for artists working in experimental sound genres such as avant folk, noise, computer-based music, free jazz and spoken word. Most programs are streamed live and free with audio and video on free103point9 Online Radio.

free103point9 also continues some of its early work with a Radio Lab education project. "Radio Lab" was spawned from a 1999 free103point9 education program with youth from East Harlem's Kids Discover Radio, an after school science program in a housing project, and at El Puente, a Williamsburg-based neighborhood center in Brooklyn. free103point9 Radio Lab seminars have since been presented at educational and cultural institutions throughout including Columbia University, Brown University, Brooklyn College, the Grassroots Media Conference at The New School, New York University's ITP Program, The Kitchen, Participant, Inc., Flux Factory, OfficeOps, and at Pittsburgh's the Mattress Factory. We continue to offer these educational workshops to all ages.

And a slew of other projects support other artists, such as a residency program called AIRtime at Wave Farm; a Dispatch Series of LPs, CDs, tapes and books; an extensive calendar of events on our web site, where anyone can add their own event to a large public calendar; occasional fiscal sponsorship on a per project basis; and an online radio station playing experimental works of all sorts at all hours of every day, with many special live shows. And the free103point9 Newsroom contains open calls, transmission art updates, news from microradio stations and international radio regulations, and much more.

And this summer free103point9 will debut a new Study Center at Wave Farm. Eventually when finished, the building will house a library for public studies of transmission arts, as well as the AIRtime residency program, and other special radio installations, workshops, meetings, broadcasts, and more.

free103point9 was founded in 1997 by Greg Anderson, Violet Hopkins, and Tom Roe. Matt Bua, Dave Kay, Jeanne McCabe, Bess Stiffelman, and Carrie Dashow all made significant contributions during free103point9's collective years. In 2002, Galen Joseph-Hunter, Matt Mikas, and Tom Roe founded the non-profit media arts organization that is now free103point9. Tianna Kennedy and Sarah Lippek both joined the staff in 2003 with Lippek leading the Radio Lab education program for several years, and Kennedy continuing to this day as Special Projects Coordinator, and an invaluable radio expert.

Current active volunteers include Roshan Abraham, Allie Alvarado, Mara Barenbaum (intern at Wave Farm), Giancarlo Bracchi, Jennifer Cohlman, Greta Cohn, Gabriel Farrell, Sarah Margaret Halpern, Kenneth Lang, Billy Nastyn, James Trimarco, and others.

Past actions, ongoing efforts, and special thanks: Valerie Allen, Cecily Anderson, Greg Anderson, Tim Annett, Phyllis Baldino, Phil Ballman, Jeffrey Barke, Broklyn Beats, Erika Biddle, Kelly Benjamin, Matt Bua, Aaron Davidson, Briana Davis, Dharma Dailey, Carrie Dashow, Melissa Dubbin, Andrew Duetsch, Jess Dunne, EAI, Lily Gottlieb-McHale, Kurt Gottschalk, Josh Haglund, Michele Hardesty, Cortney Harding, Patrick Heilman, Cathy Hersh, Ryan Holsopple, Violet Hopkins, I-Sound, Mikey IQ, Eli Joseph-Hunter, Dave Kay, Professor Klystron, Emily Lambert, Sarah Lippek, Kevin & Jennifer McCoy, Eric Morrison, Tom Mulligan, Caireen O'Hagan, Seth Price, India Richards, Michelle Rosenberg, Ron Rosenman, Brad Truax, Russ Waterhouse, Fritz Welch, Eugene Won, and Philip Von Zweck. In addition, Screw Music Forever originally got the free103point9 web site going.

--Tom Roe

(Early prototype for Jeff Feddersen's "EarthSpeaker," pictured at left at Wave Farm.)

The Wave Farm Transmission Sculpture Garden provides a unique opportunity for artists to conceive of and realize a long-term outdoor transmission-based installation open to the public in a retreat-like rural setting. Artists are invited to submit proposals for sculptural works that incorporate the transmission spectrum in concept or practice. Artists are encouraged to consider recycled materials in their work and utilize renewable energy sources (if power is required). Works will be installed within the 15-acre evergreen forest, situated throughout already the established walking paths, at Wave Farm.

Coinciding with free103point9's tenth anniversary celebration, free103point9's Transmission Sculpture Garden will open summer 2007, with inaugural installations by Jeff Feddersen and Matt Bua.


Jeff Feddersen: EarthSpeaker
EarthSpeaker is an installation of multiple units of an outdoor sonic sculpture. Each unit is a large, solar-powered, electro-acoustic speaker, which absorbs sunlight during the day and emits low frequency sounds at dusk.


Matt Bua: Sing Sun - Room
Sing Sun - Room is a customized extension built onto an existing mobile home located on the Wave Farm property. This gazebo-like structure harnesses natural elements
(wind, water, and solar) to create a site-specific installation where live-sound is composed based on the surrounding environmental conditions.


CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Artists are invited to submit proposals for the free103point9 Wave Farm Transmission Sculpture Garden.

This is a two-part application process. Projects selected in Part I will be invited to submit a second comprehensive proposal that includes detailed installation schematics and an itemized budget. The review panel will be comprised of members of free103point9's staff and Advisory Board of distinguished artists, critics, and curators. The deadline for submissions is rolling.

Submission Guidelines (Part I):

Artists are encouraged to visit Wave Farm before submitting a proposal. Visit free103point9 Wave Farm (www.wavefarm.org) for dates and details about upcoming events.

Artist Name:

Artist Contact Information:

Artist Resume / CV:

Artist Statement:
Please describe your artistic practice in a brief statement not exceeding 300 words.

Preliminary Project Description:
Please describe your proposed project in a brief statement not exceeding 500 words. Proposals selected by the review panel will be invited to submit a comprehensive proposal in order to assess feasibility based on installation schematics
and program funding.

Past Project Work Samples:
Please include work samples relating to two or three past projects. Work samples should be submitted in electronic formats including jpegs, PDFs, QuickTime, MP3s, etc. Please do NOT submit slides.

Submission Address:
info@free103point9.org (subject: Transmission Sculpture Garden Proposal: Artist Name)
or
free103point9 Wave Farm
Transmission Sculpture Garden Proposals
5662 Route 23
Acra, NY 12405

The free103point9 Wave Farm Sculpture Garden is supported, in part, by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Individual Artists and Electronic Media and Film Programs of the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the
Greene County Legislature through the County Initiative Program, administered in Greene County by the Greene County Council on the Arts.

For more information see:
http://www.free103point9.org/sculpturegarden.php

From Daniel McSwain in Radio and Internet Newsletter:

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange(a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA). RAIN has learned the rates that the Board has decided on, effective retroactively through the beginning of 2006. They are as follows:
2006
$.0008 per performance
2007
$.0011 per performance
2008
$.0014 per performance
2009
$.0018 per performance
2010
$.0019 per performance

A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays. The minimum fee is $500 per channel per year. There is no clear definition of what a 'channel' is for services that make up individualized playlists for listeners. For noncommercial webcasters, the fee will be $500 per channel, for up to 159,140 ATH (aggregate tuning hours) per month. They would pay the commercial rate for all transmissions above that number.

Participants are granted a 15 day period wherein they have the opportunity to ask the CRB for a re-hearing. Within 60 days of the final determination, the decision is supposed to be published in the Federal Register, along with any technical corrections that the Board may wish to make. Within 30 days of publication in the Federal Register, it can be appealed (but only by the participants) to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.

Via the Danger Room blog of Wired, a company is creating a radio frequency device that disorients anyone it is aimed at, and apparently can cause vomiting.

"Invocon, Inc. proposes to investigate the use of beamed RF [radio frequency] energy to excite and interrupt the normal process of human hearing and equilibrium. The focus will be in two areas. (1) Interruption of the mechanical transduction process by which sound and position (relative to gravity) are converted to messages that are processed by the brain. (2) Interruption of the chemical engine which sustains the proper operation of the nerve cells that respond to the mechanical transduction mechanisms referenced in item (1). Interruption of either or both of these processes has been clinically shown to produce complete disorientation and confusion....

The benefits of such a weapon would be that in areas of extreme risk to Marine Corps personnel, hostiles could be controlled without loss of life. The weapon effect would be helpful in urban combat where rooms could be subjected to the EPIC stimulus and then subdued without further risk to friendlies or hostiles. Similar technology could be applied to law enforcement operations especially in hostage situations where all the people in a room could be incapacitated without damage and subsequently sorted out as to which are the bad guys and which are the good guys."

Call for Submissions
Subliminal Statements 2: the Interior World
The Newsletter of the Society for a Subliminal State

Due April 15, 2007

Submit your articles on the interior world to the second issue of Subliminal Statements. Details follow.

THEME

The earth is hollow! It's surface is riddled with paths to the inside! We want your articles on the interior world!

An interior world lies beneath the earth's crust. Centuries of industrial mining have etched labyrinthine shafts and caverns throughout the world. Beneath it are vast cave systems, replete with underground rivers, seas, and waterfalls, where unique plant and animal life thrive.

Still deeper, the earth is hollow. A differentiated body, its interior is molten: a permeable liquid mantle encircled by a comparatively thin solid husk. At the inner edge of the earth's solid shell, crystals sublimate, mingling with pockets of pressurized gas - heated and vibrant with the light of the molten interior.

For centuries, scientists, explorers, and writers have held that this fiery core is a small, inner sun, and that the inner edge of this shell of an earth is a balmy land with a surface area greater than that of the earth's outer surface. This land, inhabited by a varied plant and animal life features seas and continents. Its geography, anthropology, and physics are the subject of hundreds of books published since the late 17th century.

Other writers theorize concentric spheres within the earth, lit and heated by a luminous substance that adheres to the outer earth's inner surface. These spheres, also populated by abundant life are accessible through wide holes at the earth's poles, where the polar ice caps give way to temperate polar seas.

The second issue of Subliminal Statements will document this interior world.
We want your evidence.

FORMAT

Subliminal Statements is printed on one sheet of 11 by 17 inch paper (front and back). The newsletter is printed in a newspaper format. Accordingly we will accept articles and essays written in a style befitting a newspaper: written as though reported, brief editorials, etc. Due to the scientific nature of the issue's theme, we are also accepting submissions in the form of scientific papers, charts, or other data-heavy examinations of the theme.

Photos, drawings, illustrations, or other images should accompany text submissions only, and must be able to be printed in black and white.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Text submissions should be a maximum of 1500 words, though we will accept excerpts of longer documents, and article to be published serially (please contact us if you are interested in writing a serial article for Subliminal Statements). There is no minimum length. In fact, the shorter, the better.

Submit your text as .rtf, .txt, or .doc files, your data as .xls, or .csv files, and your images as .png, .tiff, .jpeg, or .gif (8 MB max).

E-mail your submissions to subhist@subliminalstate.org with the subject line: Subliminal Statements 3 Submission.

Your submissions must be received by midnight on April 15, 2007.

If accepted, your submissions will be published in the second issue of the Society for a Subliminal State Newsletter, a newspaper-style compact format print publication, and on the Society's web site. The print version will be distributed for free to bookstores, art events, and historical centers in New York and Massachusetts. It may be downloaded and copied for wider distribution.

ABOUT THE SOCIETY

The Society for a Subliminal State is a fledgling organization started by Carrie Dashow and Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg. The Society for a Subliminal State agitates against the exclusive use of empirical evidence in the search for truth. It is an organization that believes there are many different types of digging that to be productively undertaken. The Society for a Subliminal State mirrors the form of a traditional historical society, contributing to the public discourse through a quarterly newsletter and a website. Subliminal Statements accepts articles on topics avoided by publications that advocate fact checking. The Society grounds itself in the belief that truth is deeper than proof, and holds that if you see it three times then that too may be the path to truth.

Visit the society's web site at http://www.subliminalstate.org/

free103point9 Online Radio
March 2007 Top 40

1. Parts & Labor, Escapers One (Broklyn Beats)
2. (), "Autecicadas/ocean_db_crash_nue" 7" (Parentheismusic.com)
3. Mouthus, For the Great Slave Lakes (Threelobed)
4. The Dust Dive Flash, Tens of Thousands (free103point9 Audio Dispatch 029)
5. Total Life, "A Thousand Lights/Peaks" 12" (Animal Disguise)
6. Jonas Braasch, Global Reflections (Deep Listening)
7. Meri von Kleinsmid, Ex Vivo (Mimeograph)
8. Gay Bomb/Ironing split LP (Hymn)
9. Drop the Lime, Sky City Rising (Broklyn Beats)
10. mirror/dash, "i can't be bought" (Threelobed)
11. Various artists, Less Self is More Self: A Benefit for Tarantula Hill (Ecstatic Peace)
Includes LoVid, Chris Corsano, Burning Star Core, Lee Renaldo, Talibam!, Maria Chavez, Mark Morgan, To Live and Shave in L.A., Mouthus, Nautical Almanac + Leslie Keffer, and others.
12. Ignaz Schick + Jorg Maria Zeger + Burkhard Beins with Keith Rowe and with Charlwmagne Palestine, Perlonex Tensions (Nexsound)
13. Andy Graydon, At Bay (Winds Measure)
14. Compiled by TJ Norris, triMIX: TribrydInstallation Soundtracks Deconstructed (Innova)
With Scanner, Beequeen, Humectant Interruption, M. Behrens, Asmus Tietchens, Nobukazu Takemura, Illusion of Safety, and others.
15. Pauline Oliveros, Lion's Eye/Lion's Tale (Deep Listening)
16. Phantom Limb & Tetuzi Akiyama, Hot Ginger (Archive)
Recorded June, 2006 at free103point9 Project Space in Brooklyn.
17. Mike Tamburo and His Orchestra, Ghosts of Marumbey (New American Folk Hero)
18. Kotra & Zavoloka, Wag the Swing (Kvitnu.com)
19. Eloe Omoe, marauders (Animal Disguise)
20. Wether, Skin Atonement (Hymn)
21. Tor Lundvall, Empty City (Strange Fortune)
22. Anna Friz, Vacant City Radio (self)
23. Edmund Mooney, Happy Trails (self)
24. Layne Garrett, The Lost Spaces Reconstructed (sockets)
25. Gratkowski + Fox + Menestres + Davis, ORM (Umbrella Recordings)
26. Sixes, Cursed Beast (enterruption)
27. Vertonen, Stations (CIP)
28. Eric Carbonara, Seven Pieces for Solo Guitar (Nada Sound Studio)
29. Dave Krejci, The Cleophone (New American Folk Hero)
30. Francois Houle, Aerials (Drip Audio)
31. Egghatcher, Accidents (New American Folk Hero)
32. Various artists, Ghos Busters III (Record Label Records)
Features Fluorescent Grey, Sote, Tomoroh Hidari, and others.
33. Robert Horton, Expotition (New American Folk Hero)
34. FFFFs, I Can Hear Summer Coming (Sockets)
35. Various artists, The Art of the Virtual Rhythmicon (Innova)
With Jeff Feddersen, Matthew Burtner, Janek Schaefer, Annie Gosfield, and others.
36. Jesse Zubot, Dimensia (Drip Audio)
37. Fond of Tigers, A Thing to Live With (Drip Audio)
38. The Caution Curves, a little hungry (Sockets)
39. Caustic Castle, Caustic Castle mini-CD (804noise)
40. carsick, carsick (Drip Audio)

From Media Network Weblog:

Trudy Stevenson, the Member of Parliament for Harare North, was ejected from Parliament yesterday for attempting to defend the freedom of the airwaves in Zimbabwe after she heckled a deputy minister in the 150-member House on the issue. Stevenson was responding to an answer given by information deputy minister, Bright Matonga, on why the Zimbabwe government is jamming independent radio stations such as SW Radio Africa, Studio 7 and Radio Voice of the People.

Matonga had been asked to clarify the government’s position on independent radio stations and why the government was using ruthless means to ensure listeners were deprived of news. The question was not on the order paper. Matonga gloated he was glad that the opposition MDC had noted his government had the power to jam broadcasts of “propaganda” against the State from outside the country and confirmed they indeed were jamming those broadcasts. He said he was also pleased that listeners, mainly those in the rural areas that do not even receive the local FM stations were no longer receiving the independent radio station broadcasts as their frequencies were being disturbed by government agents.

A desk within the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) has been set up to deal specifically with the jamming of the three radio stations’ frequencies. Matonga told Parliament the Zimbabwe government was right to block the radio stations from reaching people in Zimbabwe, adding the UK did not receive broadcasts from foreign countries.

“We cannot allow foreigners to invade our airwaves without our authority. We will continue to do it. We need to protect our sovereignty. If you go to England you will not receive any foreign radio station,” said Matonga. At this, Stevenson heckled Matonga saying loudly that his statement was incorrect. To the contrary, the UK received thousands of foreign stations broadcasting into the country everyday.

Many more heckles were exchanged across the floor, forcing acting Speaker, Kumbirai Kangai, to order Stevenson out of the chamber. (Source: Association of Zimbabwe Journalists)

Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture call for papers. The growing interest in community media research and practice in the last decade has been reflected by the increase in academic publications and in the number of broadcasting stations. Both scholars and practitioners have emphasized the role of community broadcasting as either an alternative or complementary sector to public and commercial stations and as a tool for enacting citizenship on a daily basis, ‘giving voice to the voiceless’, empowering marginalised groups and regenerating communities.

At the same time, technological changes in production processes, a wider availability of affordable digital technologies and a growing use of internet as a platform for broadcasting, have permitted an exponential increase in the numbers of web-based broadcasters, communicative tools for communities of interest and the exchange of content among radio stations across the world, often linking local issues to wider global social and political concerns.

Nevertheless, the influence of mainstream broadcasters on media policymaking and regulation, coupled with the organisational challenges often faced by community groups and their representative bodies, have often resulted in legislation that still limits the communicative potential of community radio and its contribution to social change, access, participation and representation in the media.

WPCC is looking for original, research-based papers that will contribute to broaden the theoretical and empirical perspectives in community radio from a range of disciplinary approaches. Approaches in Media, Communication and Cultural Studies, as well as in the wider fields of the humanities, social and applied sciences.

WPCC welcomes analyses of local, regional and national case studies, and international comparative research, as well as contributions on policy-making and regulation for community radio. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

- Media Theory, Radio Theory and Community Radio;
- Community Radio as a tool for encouraging democratic participation and activism and access to local public spheres.
- Community Radio as a tool for development and social change; for promoting and preserving local identities and local cultures; giving voice to ethnic minorities, diasporic groups and refugees; and regenerating communities;
- International/ National Policy and Regulation of Community Radio;
- Community Radio organization, decisional processes and democratic structures;
- Audience and reception studies;
- Transnational networks, infrastructures and institutions developing community radio practices;
- Community radio and media literacy;
- University, College, School and Student Radio

Applicants may submit abstracts of no more than 200 words to the Issue’s Editor Salvatore Scifo at scifos@westminster. ac.uk The deadline for the submission of abstracts is Friday 1st June 2007. Submission of articles will be by Wednesday 31st October 2007.

Further information, as well as previous issues of WPCC, can be downloaded by visiting the journal’s website at:
http://www.wmin. ac.uk/mad/ page-880

From KPIX-TV San Francisco:

A small unlicensed radio station's challenge to the seizure of its equipment by federal officials in 2003 was rejected by a U.S. appeals court in San Francisco Wednesday.

San Francisco Liberation Radio was shut down when agents of the Federal Communications Commission raided its studio in a home in the city in October 2003 and seized its equipment without notice.

The unlicensed station had been operating on 100 watts of power for 11 years. Since then, the station has been broadcasting via streaming on the Internet. The group challenged the seizure, arguing that it had constitutional rights to notice and a hearing before its equipment was confiscated. Its appeal was based on the First Amendment right of free speech and the Fifth Amendment protection against unreasonable seizures.

But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said those rights didn't apply because the unlicensed broadcasting was illegal. The court said, "Neither broadcasters nor listeners have a First Amendment right to engage in or listen to unlicensed broadcasts." The court also said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that notice and hearings before a seizure are not needed if the action serves an important government interest and is carried out by government officials. The station's lawyer, Mark Vermeulen, of San Francisco, was not immediately available for comment.

From Associated Press via Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

For many suburbanites, life without garage door openers is unimaginable. But neighbors of the Marine base here have been reduced to just that after a strong radio signal coming from the facility began neutralizing remote-control openers.

Residents have had to spend hundreds of dollars on new systems. "I feel there should be some kind of compensation," said Queen Carroll, who is in her early 70s and was forced to buy a new receiver and remote. "I am a struggling widow, if you will, and I praise the Lord I'm still here, but I am on a budget. When things like this come up totally unexpected, it is very upsetting."

Repair shops started getting a flurry of calls when the base began using the frequency in late December. Last fall, residents around an Air Force facility in Colorado Springs saw their garage-door remotes stop working when the 21st Space Wing began testing a frequency for use during homeland security emergencies or threats. Two years ago, testing of a similar system in Fort Detrick in Maryland resulted in similar problems.

For decades, the military has held a portion of the radio spectrum, from 138 to 450 megahertz, in reserve. That part was borrowed by remote-control manufacturers, with the understanding that the signal be weak enough to be overridden by the military.

The reserve frequencies became active after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when officials discovered that first responders could not communicate with one another because they were operating radios on different frequencies. The Defense Department is using the mothballed frequencies in a system that eventually will link military and civilian emergency responders. "Consumer wireless devices, such as garage door openers, operate on an unlicensed basis, meaning they are required to accept any interference from licensed spectrum users, including the Department of Defense," said Lt. Brian P. Donnelly, a spokesman for the Quantico base.

The guidelines and application for the 2007 ESS Artists Residency Program in Chicago are available online at http://www.exsost.org/essresidency.htm. Applications cannot be made online, they must be mailed to us with the complete proposal (please see guidelines).

Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) will offer four 30- to 40-hour residencies through the 2007 Artists Residency Program (ARP). These will be scheduled between June 1 and December 21, 2007. At least three of the residencies are for Chicago area artists, and, for the first time, one residency will be open to non-Chicago US artists. Each residency includes access to the ESS recording facilities with engineering assistance. The ESS recording facilities include: one 600-sq-ft live recording studio with 16-track ProTools system, baby grand piano, isolation booth; one soundtrack, mixing, and mastering studio with ProTools and MAX-MSP/Jitter; multi-channel playback and sync-to-image capabilities; various digital and analog processors and recorders.

The purpose of the ARP is to facilitate the production of finished works that will be presented to the public, so please propose only projects that can be completed within the allotted time frame. The ESS ARP residencies are for working artists with a demonstrable commitment to ongoing cultural practice. In addition to assisting artists with an established practice involving sound — composers, audio artists, musicians, sound designers, radio producers, etc. — one aim of the ARP is to help artists with limited experience in sound to locate and work with sonic artists. To this end, ESS will assist in locating an appropriate local artist to work with any selected “non-sonic” artist if they request it. Application deadline: April 2, 2007.

By Tom Roe

The New York Radio Guide is reporting the FCC has sent three Brooklyn "pirate" microcasters "Notices of Unlicensed Operation," the first step in the agency's slow enforcement process. "The broadcasters are James Narcisse of 625 Rugby Road in Flatbush, Joseph Maynard of 728 East New York Avenue in Crown Heights, and Vincent Alston of 308 Sterling Street in Crown Heights. The FCC`s efforts notwithstanding, the airwaves in Brooklyn continue to be saturated with the signals of dozens of pirate broadcasters," according to NYRG.

The New York Radio Message Board contains posts reporting dozens of other stations including, "88.1, 89.3, 90.1, 90.5, 90.9 and 94.5...94.3, 95.1, 95.9, 96.7, 97.5, 99.9, 100.7, 101.5, 102.3, 103.1, 103.9, 104.7, 105.5, 106.3, 107.1, and 107.9." The 94.3-FM station is supposedly called "My Radio Live," WHUT 91.9 is the long-runnning powerful hip hop station on evenings, and a Jewish pirate in Canarsie is on 104.9-FM, according to NYRMB posts. Also, Haitian pirates often use 87.9-FM.

From Pink Tentacle:

RFID keeps getting smaller. On February 13, Hitachi unveiled a tiny, new “powder” type RFID chip measuring 0.05 x 0.05 mm — the smallest yet — which they aim to begin marketing in 2 to 3 years. By relying on semiconductor miniaturization technology and using electron beams to write data on the chip substrates, Hitachi was able to create RFID chips 64 times smaller than their currently available 0.4 x 0.4 mm mu-chips. Like mu-chips, which have been used as an anti-counterfeit measure in admission tickets, the new chips have a 128-bit ROM for storing a unique 38-digit ID number. The new chips are also 9 times smaller than the prototype chips Hitachi unveiled last year, which measure 0.15 x 0.15 mm. At 5 microns thick, the RFID chips can more easily be embedded in sheets of paper, meaning they can be used in paper currency, gift certificates and identification. But since existing tags are already small enough to embed in paper, it leads one to wonder what new applications the developers have in mind.

From San Francisco Liberation Radio:

Finally after three years of waiting SFLR will have it's day in the Ninth Circuit. This is where we could actually do some change. Everyone who can should come on down to see the deftness of our fantastic legal team.

SFLR vs. FCC: Head to head, oral arguments!
February 14, 2007, 9:30 a.m. PST (-8 GMT), Booth Auditorium at UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall, located on Bancroft Way at College Ave. /
http://www.berkeley.edu/map/maps/DE67.html )

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral argument from lawyers representing long time media activist San Francisco Liberation Radio. SFLR was raided in October, 2003 when federal marshals, SFPD and FCC agents stormed into the home where the station was located, with guns drawn, and seized SFLR's broadcasting equipment in order to prevent SFLR from broadcasting.SFLR will argue (through its counsel, Mark Vermeulen, and other pro bono lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild) that the federal government violated the station's and its listeners' First Amendment rights when it obtained the warrant for the raid and the seizure of the equipment through a back-door, ex parte procedure. In civil seizure cases (as opposed to criminal cases), fair notice and a hearing before a judge typically must take place before any raid can go forward. This is especially true where First Amendment free speech rights are involved. However, here, the US Government here utilized a maritime law to conduct the raid without giving advance notice to the station, arguing that a radio station is like a ship that may sail away in the night.

The station, with a volunteer staff of nearly 60 people, was located in a house firmly rooted upon land and posed no danger of trying to escape, nor was it interfering with any other station's broadcasts. It had been broadcasting at 100 watts in San Francisco for 11 years and had been in consistent contact with the FCC regarding licensing matters. The Court will decide whether the government has the right to obtain from the District Court an ex parte order to raid a radio station, and seize the equipment even where as in our case, our lawyer had explicitly requested notice if such action was contemplated. This hearing is the next step in three years of legal proceedings in this case, and may well effect how the rights of others challenging FCC regulations are observed (or not) in the future.

Unbelievably, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada has somehow turned a pirate radio station into a legal low-power FM station, even though the Federal Communications Commission is not currently entertaining any applications for new LPFMs.

From the Pahrump Valley Times:

GOLDFIELD -- Chalk one up for the little guy in a battle against the federal bureaucracy. Rod Moses, owner of Radio Goldfield Broadcast Inc., was given special temporary authority to go back on the air with his low-power radio station in a Jan. 29 letter from the Federal Communications Commission.

Moses said it may be a couple of weeks yet before he hoists the 90-foot radio tower which will permit him to broadcast at 100 watts, enough to penetrate parts of Tonopah and maybe as far south as Lida Junction. The frequency this time, however, will be 106.3 FM instead of the former 100.3 FM. Moses credited Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., with pressuring the FCC.

FCC enforcement agents came to Moses' trailer, which also houses his radio station, June 9, 2006, and shut him down for operating without a license. They based the action on a complaint filed with the agency. Moses had been running Radio Goldfield since March 2005, broadcasting community news as well as oldies from an MP3 player. However, he was informed by the FCC that the period to apply for a low-wattage FM radio station license had expired. "In support of the request, RGB states that the station provides current road conditions, information on local law enforcement and public safety," states the letter from James Bradshaw, FCC deputy chief of the Audio Division Media Bureau.

The letter cites Section 309(f) of the Communications Act of 1934, which authorizes the commission to grant the temporary allowance in cases of "extraordinary circumstances requiring temporary authorizations in the public interest." A letter from Sen. Reid dated Sept. 1, 2006, to FCC chairman Kevin Martin states that Radio Goldfield made significant public interest contributions to the Goldfield community. "Radio Goldfield programming brought regular weather reports to this high-desert area of Nevada, where conditions can abruptly change in often times dramatic ways," Reid's letter states.

Reid added, "Radio Goldfield programming also included timely and reliable information on law enforcement, public safety and school activities that helped the residents of Goldfield stay informed and engaged in their community. Moreover the station broadcasted Sunday religious services that were listened to faithfully by those living too far from a place of worship or those simply too feeble to make a weekly journey there practicable." Moses said letters protesting the shutdown were sent to all the members of the Nevada congressional delegation, but all of them, except Reid, declined to take action after receiving a letter from the FCC stating that Moses was operating illegally. The FCC threatened a $10,000 fine.

Moses, a radio broadcaster for 40 years originally from Fresno, Calif., also circulated a petition around Goldfield that compiled 180 signatures requesting the station be kept open. But Moses said his compliance with the FCC agents helped him when it came time to restart the station. "We shut down immediately and that was the key to the whole licensing issue, is that when the FCC comes out you have 24 hours to shut down or you'll never get one (license)," Moses said. He told the agents, "It'll be off (the air) by the time you get to your car."

Reid, himself coming from another small town, Searchlight, sympathized with him, Moses said. Moses also credited Esmeralda County Commissioner R.J. Gillum and local Goldfield activist Virginia Ridgeway with helping his cause. Moses said a friend who used to run a 50,000-watt radio station in California informed him that because of his protest, other hopeful radio station operators are bringing up a resolution to ask the FCC to offer low-power FM licenses again. "What they do is, they paint it with a broad brush because of the metro areas," Moses said. "We'll probably operate under an STA until they reopen the filing period for low-power FM. There's thousands of stations and thousands of towns in the country that are like Goldfield. They have little or no stations around them. They (the FCC) finally discovered through us they messed up." Another low-power radio station operates out of Tonopah at 92.7 FM with no commercial interruptions, not even station identification, but a limited music selection.

free103point9 Online Radio
February 2007 Top 40

1. The Dust Dive Flash, Tens of Thousands (free103point9 Audio Dispatch 029)
2. Parts & Labor, Escapers One (Broklyn Beats)
3. (), "Autecicadas/ocean_db_crash_nue" 7" (Parentheismusic.com)
4. Ignaz Schick + Jorg Maria Zeger + Burkhard Beins with Keith Rowe and with Charlwmagne Palestine, Perlonex Tensions (Nexsound)
5. Eloe Omoe, marauders (Animal Disguise)
6. Mouthus, For the Great Slave Lakes (Threelobed)
7. Sixes, Cursed Beast (enterruption)
8. Jonas Braasch, Global Reflections (Deep Listening)
9. Phantom Limb & Tetuzi Akiyama, Hot Ginger (Archive)
Recorded June, 2006 at free103point9 Project Space in Brooklyn.
10. Pauline Oliveros, Lion's Eye/Lion's Tale (Deep Listening)
11. mirror/dash, "i can't be bought" (Threelobed)
12. FFFFs, I Can Hear Summer Coming (Sockets)
13. Gratkowski + Fox + Menestres + Davis, ORM (Umbrella Recordings)
14. Compiled by TJ Norris, triMIX: TribrydInstallation Soundtracks Deconstructed (Innova)
With Scanner, Beequeen, Humectant Interruption, M. Behrens, Asmus Tietchens, Nobukazu Takemura, Illusion of Safety, and others.
15. Vertonen, Stations (CIP)
16. Drop the Lime, Sky City Rising (Broklyn Beats)
17. Kotra & Zavoloka, Wag the Swing (Kvitnu.com)
18. Various artists, Less Self is More Self: A Benefit for Tarantula Hill (Ecstatic Peace)
Includes LoVid, Chris Corsano, Burning Star Core, Lee Renaldo, Talibam!, Maria Chavez, Mark Morgan, To Live and Shave in L.A., Mouthus, Nautical Almanac + Leslie Keffer, and others.
19. Viki, compilation (Animal Disguise)
20. Edmund Mooney, Happy Trails (self)
21. Caustic Castle, Caustic Castle mini-CD (804noise)
22. The Caution Curves, a little hungry (Sockets)
23. North Guinea Hills, North Guinea Hills et. al. (self)
With Patrick McCarthy, Michael Garafalo, Laura Harrison, Sean Smith, and others.
24. Meri von Kleinsmid, Ex Vivo (Mimeograph)
25. Others, What About My Baby Kitty? (set projects)
26. Anna Friz, Vacant City Radio (self)
27. Jesse Zubot, Dimensia (Drip Audio)
28. Various artists, The Art of the Virtual Rhythmicon (Innova)
With Jeff Feddersen, Matthew Burtner, Janek Schaefer, Annie Gosfield, and others.
29. Tor Lundvall, Empty City (Strange Fortune)
30. Layne Garrett, The Lost Spaces Reconstructed (sockets)
31. Francois Houle, Aerials (Drip Audio)
32. carsick, carsick (Drip Audio)
33. Fond of Tigers, A Thing to Live With (Drip Audio)
34. ZZ Pot & Dr. Ninja, ZZ Pot & Dr. Ninja (retardriot.com)
35. Todd Merrell, Neptune (Dreamland Recordings)
36. Giancarlo Bracchi, Universal Soul Adaptor (self)
37. DJ Slip, She's a Time Traveller (Broklyn Beats)
38. ben owen, radio in (Winds Measure Recordings)
39. Leafy Green, songs (Lattajjaa)
40. Dave Burrell, Momentum (High Two)