From networked_performance:

tobias c. van Veen and Trace Reddell will perform and discuss their new audio works at 7:30 p.m. Fri. Nov. 10 at Eyebeam. tobias will be poking his head into the aether of the airwaves to perform a short interpretation of "Autosevocom Tacsat" and will give a taste of the as-yet unreleased audiowork "Foil."

"Autosevocom Tacsat" explores surveillance frequencies of encoded police channels against a backdrop of low-end sound composed from fragments of real and virtual war-torn landscapes. "Foil" is a blend of urban recordings from a peaceful Western city with its modernist though unpeaceful counterpart in Beirut falls prey to explosive interventions in EA's BattleField 2 online wargame, eventually detonating itself into the debris of alterity.

Trace will be performing his new live cinema work, “somaticosmos.” In the "somaticosmos," cosmic dissonances intersect with bodily pulse and flow, situating human experience within a barometer of galactic conditions. Noisy space transmissions give way to lush and alien terrains, occasionally disrupted by streams of microscopic rhythms and staticky beats. The visual performance melds the techniques of live VJ projections and digital lumia with the cosmic cinema of Jordan Belson.

From Media Network weblog:

Vietnam will try three naturalized US citizens on terrorism charges over an alleged plot to use radio transmitters to take over state airwaves and call for an uprising against the communist government, a judge said today. Vietnamese-born Thuong Nguyen “Cuc” Foshee and Le Van Binh, both of Florida, and Huynh Bich Lien “Linda” of California, are scheduled to stand trial in the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court on Friday along with four Vietnamese nationals. “They are charged with terrorism,” said Bui Hoang Danh, the court’s chief judge. “It means that they may face sentences of at least 12 years imprisonment or even death sentences.” The defendants are accused of bringing 14 radio transmitters and five generators into Vietnam in early 2005, allegedly planning to electronically seize control of the Voice of Vietnam Radio and call for an uprising against the government, according to Nhan Dan, the official Communist Party newspaper.

Danh would not elaborate on how the alleged radio jamming could be interpreted as a deadly act, but the Nhan Dan article briefly mentioned that the alleged plot also involved plans to “jam and disturb” aviation radio communication. The defendants rented a house in Cambodia and opened a phony charity organization in order to train in broadcasting skills, Danh was quoted as saying by the Vietnam News Agency. (Source: afp)

Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media with Congressman Maurice Hinchey are organizing our own Public Hearing so that the FCC and Congress can hear from the public, how to serve the public’s interest. Join us: Nov. 21 at 6 p.m. at the Wallace Center (which is the FDR Center in Hyde Park). The FCC is once again taking up the issue of media ownership rules and intends, as it tried unsuccessfully in 2003, to ignore its responsibility to the public. If the FCC has its way it will hand over our airwaves to an ever shrinking group of media moguls, who will be the sole determiners (along with their partner in crime, otherwise known as "The Decider") of all that the American people get to see and hear and read– everything that passes for information in the United States. How does the FCC fulfill its intended role to protect the public interest? Well, in 2003 FCC Commissioners and staffers took more than 2,500 junkets at a cost of $2.8 million- paid for by those very corporations they're supposed to be regulating. Owners and lobbyists for the country's largest broadcasting conglomerates meet regularly, behind closed doors, with FCC officials (71 times at least in 2003). How many times did the public get to meet with the FCC in 2003? Answer: there was one public hearing held. This year, the FCC will magnanimously hold six public hearings while it prepares to ignore the public once again. As Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) has told us: "Chairman Kevin Martin has made it quite clear that he intends to overturn the existing rules, which are our last backstop against the concentration of print and broadcast media into the hands of a few major corporations." Media consolidation is one of the most dangerous issues confronting our democracy. As control of the media is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer conglomerates, local reporting disappears, the diversity both of viewpoints and ownership disintegrates, the marketplace of ideas shrinks and, as a result, the media will cease to be the crucial check on the power of the federal government that the founding fathers intended.

From Canadian Press via The Globe and Mail by Tara Brautigam:

It was a technological milestone that laid the groundwork for today's cellphones and BlackBerrys. On Dec. 12, 1901, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi made history by announcing he had used a kite and some copper wire atop Signal Hill in St. John's to receive a wireless signal from across the Atlantic Ocean.

More than a century later, a group of radio scientists in Newfoundland are conducting a series of tests that could debunk Marconi's claim to fame. "We're essentially setting out to prove it wrong," said Joe Craig, a physicist and director of the Marconi Radio Club.

Mr. Craig and several other researchers are using a combination of modern computer technology and vintage equipment to determine whether the inventor actually heard three faint, electromagnetic clicks -- the letter S in Morse code -- that were transmitted from 3,470 kilometres away in Poldhu, England. "We can never recreate his exact equipment, because to do that would be to interfere with all sorts of essential radio communication that's going on all the time," said Len Zedel, a physics professor at Memorial University who is also working on the tests. A station has been set up in the St. John's area, using a 150-metre antenna attached to a receiver the size of a pocketbook. A transmitter station in Poldhu began sending its call letters, GB3SSS, in Morse code Wednesday at 15-minute intervals.

The Honorable Antonio O. Garza, Jr.
U.S. Ambassador to Mexico
Department of State
United States of America
Via Facsimile: 011.5255.52 07 0091

Dear Ambassador Garza,

The organizations listed below formally protest the killing of
independent journalist Bradley Roland Will in Oaxaca, Mexico on October
27th 2006 and request that the Government of the United States of America use all appropriate means to insure that his death is
investigated and that the perpetrators are brought to justice.
All American citizens must be protected by the full power of our
government wherever they travel in the world. This is especially the
case when that citizen is a journalist attempting to report the truth
in a dangerous situation. When the members of the press are subjected to
physical attack, it is our values of freedom and of democracy which
suffer. These are values to which the governments of Mexico and the
U.S. both ascribe. Legal reaction to this murder must be swift and direct.
Bradley Roland Will was a legitimate journalist whose work was
cablecast on Public Access television stations throughout the United States, as well as in Central and South America, and was distributed online.
Hoodlums and political operatives who wish to operate under cover of
darkness often feel safe in silencing independent reporters through
acts of violence and intimidation. Violence against reporters on the edge is harbinger to destruction of press freedom in the middle. Our government and mainstream press should feel the same outrage over this killing as over the death of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. If anything, reporters who give of their own resources and work under such dangerous circumstances are even more deserving of our respect and protection because of the great personal sacrifice they endure in the
quest for the information we need to exist as a free people. The undersigned implore the United States government to:
1. Give full governmental protection throughout the world, in word
and deed, to community-based journalists from the United States.
2. Ask the Mexican Government to make a formal, federal inquiry
into the killing of journalist Bradley Roland Will in Oaxaca on October 27,
2006.
3. Ask that the Mexican Government bring his killer(s) to justice.
4. Ask that the Mexican Government state clearly that it will not
tolerate the targeting of journalists covering conflicts, no matter
what their affiliations or nationalities.
If the tragic killing of Bradley Roland Will results in the
strengthening of protections for independent journalists, then his
death will not have been in vain. More importantly, we will have stood
together as a nation against an attack on our free press and the many
freedoms which are built upon it.
Please keep us informed of your actions in this matter. Thank you for
your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Anthony Riddle Executive Director, Alliance for Community Media.
Washington, DC.
Robert McChesney President, Free Press. Northampton, MA.
Prometheus Radio Project. Philadelphia, PA.
New York City Independent Media Center. New York, NY.
Guerrilla News Network. New York, NY.
Center for International Media Action. New York, NY.
Michael Eisenmenger Manhattan Neighborhood Network. New York.
Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Los Angeles, CA.

On this day in 1920, KDKA (1020-AM) in Pittsburgh became the first commercially licensed radio station continuously operating. Others claim WHA in Madison, WI or XWA (later CFCF and now CINW) in Montreal, Canada, were first, but KDKA had the best publicity department, and may have gotten the first certificate from the Department of Commerce (before there was a Federal Commuications Commission).

Call for Submissions
Subliminal Statements: Sublunary Statements
First Issue of the Newsletter of the Society for a Subliminal State
Due November 21, 2006, Midnight

Subliminal Statements is looking for essays for the upcoming Sublunary Edition. Details follow.

THEME

The Subliminal Statements newsletter prints articles and essays on subliminal history: writing about the agency of land - a broader reality beyond that which we can see - a world in which past, present, and future combine. The theme of the first issue of the Society newsletter is "Sublunary Statements." Sublunary, meaning "beneath the moon" or "of this earth" refers to all that takes place here on the earth's surface. We want your articles about the thin slices of reality that comprise the built environment in which we live, or our everyday experience, and how these things are evidences of something else.

FORMAT

Subliminal Statements is published in newspaper format. Accordingly, we will accept articles and essays written in a style befitting a newspaper: written as though reported, brief editorials, etc. Photos, drawings, or illustrations should accompany articles 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. There is no minimum length. In fact, the shorter, the better. Submit your text as .rtf, .txt, or .doc 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 Submission. Your submissions must be received by midnight on November 21, 2006. If accepted, your submissions will be published in the first 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. It may be downloaded and copied for wider distribution.

The upcoming edition of Two Thousand + SEVEN will once again run in parallel to the Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music (www.sonorities.org.uk), hosted by the Sonic Arts Research Center, Queen's University Belfast (www.sarc.qub.ac.uk). The festival is the longest-running new music festival in Ireland that presents cutting-edge new music and features some of the most thought-provoking and controversial musicians.

Call for papers/presentations:

The "object is no longer to compare humans and machines in order to evaluate the correspondences, the extensions, the possible or impossible substitutions of the one for the other, but to bring them into communication in order to show how humans are a component part of the machine, or combine with something else to constitute a machine. The other thing can be a tool, or even an animal, or other humans" (Deleuze and Guattari, 1995).1

Machinic performance, in Deleuze's and Guattari's sense, happens at multiple sites through multiple agents, both human and technological, and "to research a machinic performance implies to become part of it" (McKenzie, 2005).2

A multi-site networked music performance for example can range from performing a notated score with another musician in a remote location, improvising with other performers in different virtual spaces, playing with algorithms (the other performer could be a machine), to staging a performance in a virtual world (such as the online multi-player gaming environment Second Life). Considerations of physical and virtual space are central to any technological construct that promotes social engagement, and as music performance is a field where physical, time-based, subjective and inter-personal concerns are most apparent, it is a highly suitable activity for exploring networked environments. The questions that arise in virtual performance environments are of practical as well as of cultural nature:
• What is the performer's and audience's experience of performances in virtual environments?
• What type of language between performer and audience will (or will have to) develop in a virtual performance?
• How do instrumental/ensemble feedback performance strategies (such as breathing, eye contact or body movements) manifest themselves in virtual environments?
• How can we better understand a phenomenology of virtual performance environments?
• How do virtual music exchanges redefine ideas and definitions of the performative?
• How do virtual performance environments change our ideas of the body/instrument 'relation'?
• What are the implications for the erotics of the body in an environment that is so often characterised by an absence of tactile behaviours?
For this one-day event we invite proposals for performative and theoretical papers that elucidate issues in networked performance environments.

A maximum of 8 papers of 20 minutes duration (plus question time) will be accepted. Abstracts (max. 350 words) are due in electronic format by the 15th of December 2006. Presenters of accepted papers/presentations will be informed by the 15th of January 2007. All accepted papers will be published on the SARC site. Submissions and all queries should be directed to: f r a n z i s k a s c h r o e d e r franzisk[at]lautnet[dot]net

WRO 07 (C): 12th International Media Art Biennale

International Competition

12th International Media Art Biennale WRO 07 (C) WRO Center for Media Art Foundation in Wroclaw, Poland announces an international competition open to any work created using electronic media techniques, exploring innovative forms of artistic communication.

The competition welcomes creators of artistic projects of diverse forms such as screenings (video art, computer animation), installations, objects, performances, multimedia concerts and network projects from all over the world. The main prize is eur5000 and the total prize money awarded is eur8000.

The deadline date for entry submission is 15 February 2007. Presentation of works selected to the very final along with the international jurys announcement of competition results will take place during public screening at the WRO 07 Biennale.

Agenda: 16 - 20 May 2007 competition, special events, symposium; 16 May - 17 June 2007 exhibition. National Museum in Wroclaw, WRO Art Center.

Bang on a Can is on the lookout for the newest and most adventurous new music from around the world. Bang on a Can organizes and sponsors a wide variety of events and concerts, including an all-day Marathon of new music. Every year, we present pieces we have discovered through our annual call for tapes at our events. We are looking for music for the Bang on a Can Marathon, People's Commissioning Fund, and other concerts. Instrumentation can be for small ensembles, composer-performers , our ensemble - the Bang on a Can All-Stars (cello, percussion, piano, electric guitar, bass, clarinets) or any other instrumentation.

Please send cassette tapes or CD's (no scores). Include on the tape the name of the work, its instrumentation and duration, the name(s) of the performer(s) and the composer's name, address, phone number, and email address. DATs and videos are also okay. Due to the large volume of tapes we receive, we cannot return submissions. If we choose your material, we will contact you. Send tapes/CD's to Bang on a Can, 80 Hanson Place, 7th Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11217 USA; please clearly mark package "Open Call for Music." Open Call is a rolling process... Before every major event that Bang on a Can plans, all Open Call submissions that have been received are listened to. Feel free to send your material at any point and know that we will listen to everything."

from REC Networks:

In a landmark decision, the FCC has granted a waiver of several rules to Thin Air Community Radio, licensee of KYRS-LP in Spokane, WA. The station, currently faced with encroachment from a metro move by a station in Idaho was looking for creative solutions to keep the station on the air. Under the existing rules, the statation was deadlocked as there were no alternate channels available. Thin Air has filed for 89.9 (Ch. 210) at it's licensed site. The proposed facility was second adjacent short spaced to KEWU-FM, Cheney, WA. Using methodology from the translator rules, Thin Air was able to show that the 130.5 dBu interfering contour only extended 22 meters from the transmitter. Thin Air entered into an agreement with Eastern Washington University, licensee of KEWU-FM with specific conditions on the handling of interference. The proposed facility was also short spaced under the LPFM rules to KHQ-TV Channel 6. In this case, Thin Air applied regular non-commercial FM rules and used vertical polarization to show that the station would not interfere with Channel 6 in Spokane. Thin Air reached an interference agreement similar to what they reached with KEWU-FM. KHQ plans to vacate Channel 6 to move to Channel 7 for the DTV transition as noted in their First Channel Election filing.
In its decision, the FCC stated:
Section 632(a)(2)(A) prohibits the Commission from eliminating or reducing the third-adjacent channel protections required by paragraph (a)(1)(A). Congress did not impose a similar prohibition with regard to second-adjacent channel separation requirements. Moreover, Congress is well aware of the Commission's judicially-endorsed "good cause" waiver standard. In these circumstances, we conclude that Section 632 bars the Commission from granting third-adjacent channel rule waivers only.

The United States will spend $465 million beaming freedom signals to Cuba in 2007, and virtually no one will see or hear the U.S. propaganda, according to Vincent Parascandolo from the Center for International Policy. Parascandolo quotes Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, who said in 2000, "For nine and a half million dollars in the coming fiscal year, $139 million over the last decade, another hundred million dollars over the next decade, we ask Cubans to get up in the middle of the night to watch snow on a blank screen. This makes no sense at all."

From Media Network weblog:

Vincent Parascandolo, a research assistant at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC writes: “Of all the resources spent on US policy toward Cuba, Radio and TV Martí are probably two of the most egregious examples of wasted taxpayer money - nearly a half-billion dollars squandered on television and radio transmissions to the island and reaching virtually no audience.” In a commentary published in the Fort Lauderdale newspaper Sun-Sentinel, Parascandolo says that “TV Martí seems to be a matter of giving the BBG and its staff extra jobs and salaries, and pandering to voters in Miami, which helps win elections in Florida.”

Hillsborough County Sheriffs arrested 20-year-old Marjorie Voltaire in Tampa on October 12 for operating a radio station.

The sheriff's press release says, "Responding to a complaint from the Federal Communications Commission, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s deputies executed a search warrant at 13410 La Place Circle #127 around 11:30 p.m. on October 12, 2006. Marjorie Voltaire was arrested for unauthorized transmission of a radio broadcast. Voltaire had been transmitting music over an FM band without a license. Radio transmissions were being broadcast at the time detectives entered the apartment."

Baynews9.com reports that Voltaire was released on $2,000 bond and was, "charged with unauthorized radio transmission, which is a third-degree felony." The St. Petersburg Times reports, "deputies served a search warrant at Voltaire's apartment. They found $10,000 worth of broadcasting equipment and a large antennae, said Hillsborough County sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway....Voltaire, who has no criminal record in Florida, is Haitian, and she set up the station about a month ago, Callaway said."

Florida and New Jersey recently made it a state crime to operate a radio station without a license.

New York City Indymedia journalist Bradley Will, 36, was shot in the chest Friday covering protests in Oaxaca City, Mexico. He died before reaching the hospital, according to La Jornada. Oswaldo Ramirez, a photographer from the newspaper Milenio Diario, who was at Will's side, was shot in the foot and reported injured, his status unknown, according to NYC Indymedia reports. Will was a Steal This Radio (Lower East Side, 88.7-FM) alum, according to Al Giordano at Narco News. Even the Associated Press is pointing fingers at the police, and there seems to be many photos, and, presumably, the video footage Will was shooting at the time. Other reports on the NYC Indymedia site say that three others are dead, and a Radio Universidad member was injured. Radio APPO, the radio of the Assembly Popular of the Oaxacan People, are reporting truckloads of armed paramilitaries entering the city. Listen to Spanish feed:
Radio APPO.

Federal Communications Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps attended a "Town Hall/Public Hearing on the Future of Diversity in the Nation’s Media" Oct. 19 at Hunter College. WFMU has a three-hour recording of the proceedings, including these highlights:

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein's comments - 14:32
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps' comments - 26:16
An elderly lady sticks it to The Man - 1:27:42
Afrika Bambaattaa testimony - 2:05:09
Take-the-airwaves-away-from-those-obscene-media-molesters rant - 2:35:28
Well-spoken teen waxes eloquent: hip-hop on the radio and institutionalized power hierarchies - 2:37:55

Two groups released studies this week about media consolidation.

On Wednesday the Media and Democracy Coalition released a series of reports focusing on the economic effects of industry consolidation in twelve states. Not surprisingly they find that media consolidation is bad. The coalition includes groups such as Free Press, the Benton Foundation, the Alliance for Community Media and the Prometheus Radio Project. The report said, "The research finds that in every one of those states, most citizens already live in highly concentrated media markets with few choices for news and views. More media mergers in these highly concentrated markets will reduce already insufficient local news coverage and eliminate diverse voices and viewpoints and, in every case, exceed US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Merger Guidelines."

The Benton group and the Social Science Research Council released four other reports on the impact of media consolidation in the U.S. The reports said, "The studies focus on how the concentration of media ownership affect media content, from local news reporting to radio music programming and how minority groups have fared – as both media outlet owners and as historically-undeserved audiences -- in an increasingly deregulated media environment. These studies make clear that media consolidation does not correlate with better, more local or more diverse media content. To the contrary, they strongly suggest that media ownership rules should be tightened not relaxed."

From Mediageek: "The background to the release of all these reports is that initial public comments to the FCC on its media ownership proceeding [were due] Monday, Oct. 23. And, yet, the FCC has held only one of its promised six public hearings on the topic, and released zero of its own research reports that were promised."

DIY Media is one of the few outlets that cover all sorts of pirate radio activity, including the illegal actions of radio corporations.

Recently, they have reported that, "XM and Sirius admitted to selling souped-up in-car transceivers that operated beyond acceptable FCC power levels... XM Satellite Radio now reports that its terrestrial-based network of repeater-transmitters -- designed to bolster its space-based coverage pattern, especially in urban areas -- has not only been operating at excessive power, but on unauthorized frequencies."

Many of the "souped-up in-car transceivers" and other devices meant to send an audio signal from something like an iPod to a radio are slightly above FCC "Part 15" regulations. No one would buy them if they were weak enough to be legal. (You can expose the antennae in these devices to make them slightly more powerful.) So the crimes of these satellite radio corporations aren't that unusual. XM, though, admitting to setting up pirate radio stations all over the country is a different story. The National Association of Broadcasters and National Publc Radio (especially hard-hit because most of the small transmitters use lower-FM frequencies like NPR stations) are both complaining to the FCC.

DIYmedia also reports, "Last year the FCC issued several Notices of Apparent Liability to several cross-border companies in southern California. These companies were using unlicensed microwave data links to connect corporate and production facilities... [using] unlicensed studio-to-transmitter (STL) links to connect studios in the U.S. with transmitters in Tijuana. Both of them claimed they were operating under the counsel of the FCC's International Bureau, which assured them they didn't need licenses anymore to operate the links. The Enforcement Bureau called that counsel 'misplaced' and 'mistaken.'" The two stations were fined $68,000.

New Jersey Christian radio station WAWZ (99.1-FM) recently mailed a postcard to listeners asking them to help fight the Carribean "pirate" radio stations in Brooklyn that are also using the 99.1-FM frequency. "We Need Your Help!," the station's web site says. "It has come to our attention that someone is broadcasting a different format illegally on the same frequency as STAR 99.1 FM. Your immediate response and cooperation are needed to help us resolve this issue, so that you can once again enjoy the family friendly programming of STAR 99.1." Legal New Haven-based WPLR also interferes with the Zarephath, New Jersey-based WAWZ's reception in New York City.

Federal Communications Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps -- who stopped at Hunter College in New York last week -- take their traveling public hearing roadshow to Oakland Oct. 27 at the Oakland Marriott, Broadway at 10th Street. Get there by 5 p.m. to comment on FCC deregulation and other topics.

Protest Academy / Station Vienna
Call for Tactical Audio Submissions
Deadline: 01. November 2006
11. November 2006, 2 p.m.
Protest Academy Workshop, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna

Until November 1, 2006, Protest Academy by London-based artist Paula
Roush/msdm, is looking for sound works made out of field recordings,
found sounds, auditory interventions, activated soundscapes,
performed sound walks, pirate broadcasts, sonic tools and other
experimental formats on the theme of Tactical Audio. Contributions
will be collected for an online archive on http://protest-
academy.msdm.org.uk/.

msdm's Protest Academy, hosted by the exhibition EAR APPEAL in the
Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna, extends the Academy in Austria for
the first time. http://kunsthalle.wuk.at/2/frame.htm The
collaborative Academy was launched in London in February-March 2005
as a performative archive, which is structured into a four part
collective score of the academy's inaugural lecture titled: 'What are
we doing? What's happening to us? What needs to be done? I prefer not
to'

On November 11, 2006, 2pm the contributors to Tactical Audio are
cordially invited to present and discuss their submissions during the
Protest Academy Workshop, facilitated by Paula Roush/msdm, at
Kunsthalle Exnergasse. The idea is to generate a further station of
the performative archive in situ, investigating the sound of protest
from the perspective and situation in Vienna. Interested visitors/
listeners are welcomed!

According to the submissions until November 1 and the workshop on November 11, the radio contribution I LOST MY VOICE TODAY on November 12, 2006 on Ö1 Kunstradio will consist of submissions of the Call for Tactical Audio for the Protest Academy / Station Vienna and a selection of the already archived Tactical Audio of the Protest Academy. http://www.kunstradio.at