Usually, when the U.S. invades a country the first thing it does is set up a pirate radio station. But this is the Bush administration, so they are just now getting around to launching Voice of America's Deewa (Light) Radio in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

In the coming months VOA will expand the propaganda to six hours of daily news programming from its current one hour.

Simultaneita: Ars HyperMedia Almanac

Call for Papers and Artworks

Ars HyperMedia, Call for papers and artworks, the submission deadline is November 20, 2006. Simultaneita new media arts magazine is pleased to announce this call for submissions for a special project. Yearly full-color printed "Ars HyperMedia Almanac" on digital culture / media arts. The publication will feature various sections, to be formed through articles, texts, interviews and images. Keywords: -- net / web art -- digital art -- hacker art / hacktivism / artivism -- architecture / design -- dance / theatre -- sound / sonic art / electronic music -- electronic literature -- festivals / art centers / galleries -- curating and preserving new media art -- cross-media -- cinema / animation / comics. Articles may be 2,000 words in length. What kind of artworks are we looking for? Digital art, graphic works, illustrations, digital photos, sketches, drawings, video, CD or DVD, graphic novels are accepted. File format: photoshop tiff, jpg 300 dpi.

A few Friday radio items:

* Watch a video presentation by Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware, a book about the potential of a world dominated by RFIDs (radio frequency IDs) and other tracing technology here.

* Check out this flicker set of photos of vintage BBC radio equipment here.

* From DIYmedia: "The FCC is soliciting comment on rules to govern an upcoming auction of 124 full-power FM station construction permits around the country. These channels are on the commercial portion of the FM dial; the action is set to commence on March 7."

* Radio propagandist Iva Ikuko Toguri (aka Tokyo Rose) died the other day. WFMU's blog has an excellent obituary here.

* In Florida, the sheriff busts the "pirates," not the Feds.

* The Radio Transmission Orchestra (RTO) invites you to bring tuneable FM radios at 6 p.m. Sunday to join in at Cold Storage, 1168 E 5th St, in Los Angeles.

Designed by Caireen O'Hagan and Manche Mitchell, and being constructed in multiple phases, the free103point9 Wave Farm Study Center will feature reading, viewing, and listening libraries specific to transmission art. Eventually, the structure will also house accommodations for two artists-in-residents, a performance and gallery space, and the free103point9 archives.

By next summer, we will have a large shed with a roof and a place for performances without minding so much if a little rain falls. The rest of the building will be completed as funds allow.

In the background you can see the Catskill Mountains. On the left side of the building, the performance area will be set up, underneath a large roof that extends past the concrete foundation.

free103point9 works with a core group of artists exploring transmission as a medium for creative expression. This genre includes experimental practices in radio art, video art, light sculpture, and installation and performance utilizing the electromagnetic spectrum. Please click on the links below for work samples, exhibition histories, and biographical information specific to each of these artists who incorporate transmission practices in their performance, sound, video, and sculptural work.

free103point9 is excited to announce the following new
Transmission Artists:

Latitude/Longitude

Sophea Lerner

Todd Merrell

More information:

Latitude/Longitude
Brooklyn-based artists Michael Garofalo and Patrick McCarthy began performing as Latitude/Longitude in 2004. Teasing melodies out of prepared and alternately tuned guitars while electronics murmur in a nest of instrument cables at their feet, the duo weave electro-acoustic dream songs from cross-circuit chaos. In 2005 Latitude/Longitude released their self-titled debut album on their own imprint, Early Thieves. Eschewing traditional arrangements, they favor a looser, more spontaneous approach to composition. Live improvisations are played back and manipulated until they take new forms. The results range from surreal folk and delicate instrumentals to noise-drenched drones. Latitude/Longitude continue to work with diverse sonic materials: test oscillators, homemade cassette tape and field recordings, radio transmissions (FM/AM/SW/CB), and toy electronics (broken and functional), as well as more traditional instruments, such as pedal steel guitar, banjo, mbira, and voice. www.minutesandseconds.com

Sophea Lerner
Sophea Lerner is an australian sonic media artist and broadcaster currently working between Australia, Finland, and India. Her work brings together experience in group devised physical performance with 15 years of experimental radio and new media art into a collaborative art practice which explores mediated temporal experience. Lerner's radiomaking encompasses intricately composed radiophonic projects as well as engineering and production and collectively devised, rapidly executed semi-improvised live broadcasts. Community and creative networks are integral to collaborative aspects of her practice. She currently runs media and sonic arts courses at the Centre for Music & Technology in Helsinki where she has directed experimental open content fm/hybrid broadcast project ääniradio in Helsinki since 2004 and particle/wave festival of hybrid radio in 2005. In 2006 she was artist in residence at Sarai, New Delhi. She is an active member of the foodradio_network which broadcasts monthly on free103point9.

Todd Merrell
Since 1978 Todd Merrell has been fascinated with the imperceptible environment of electromagnetic radiation that shortwave radio and processing can capture, and transform into an immersive, musical environment. In 1991 he began exploring the musical possibilities of this world in a collaboration with Patrick Jordan. The result was SWR, a two movement work that was performed several times in Chicago, and on WBEZ National Public Radio. Composer Lou Mallozzi, of the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, wrote in P-Form Magazine: "It soon becomes clear that the focus of the work is not on acheiving any particular musical moment, but on the ephemerality of sonic transformation itself. Unlike compositions that utilize radio in part for its referential or signifying qualities, SWR is more in the minimalist tradition of relying on the primacy of the material itself. The work is a celebration of the radio as material and of the belief that minutiae and limited systems can yield rich results. But it is also a celebration of the rich, ragged, unstable thickness of analog sound in a world anesthetized by the crisp and clean precision of digital audio." He has since developed these techniques and incorporated them into a larger, more visually and sonically evocative world, with an emphasis on live performance, and the thrilling contingency and danger that such site- and time- specifically dependent work produces. Along with several current solo projects, he continues to work with like-minded musicians and sound artists, and recently completed a new project with Aidan Baker, who joined him in 2004 on a mini-tour of the Northeastern United States. Todd Merrell studied music composition and voice at Berklee College of Music, and with composer James Sellars of the Hartt School. His works have been performed by The New York Festival Of Song, Chicago A Capella, and double bassist Robert Black of Bang On A Can Allstars. Merrell has performed in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Hartford, and at such venues as Knitting Factory, Issue Project Room, Galapagos Art Space, Cake Shop, Hot House, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, Berklee Performance Center, 119 Gallery, Real Art Ways, and Free 103point9’s Wave Farm. He has collaborated with BT, Aidan Baker, Duane Pitre, Casey Block, Lou Rossi, Patrick Jordan, Gary Higgins, Bunny Brains, Blaise Siwula, and Jake Bell, and appeared with Francisco Lopez, Joan La Barbara, Robert Dick, Ricardo Arias, Barbara Ess, Peggy Ahwesh, and Sybarite. Todd Merrell’s recent solo album ‘Neptune’ was released in February, 2006 on Dreamland Recordings, and he has recorded for Whirlybird and Transient Frequency. www.toddmerrell.com

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

RadioREVOLTEN opened a few days ago (Sept. 20) and continues gathering radio artists (including free103point9 Transmission Artist Anna Friz) and projects in Germany through Oct. 21.

The conference, "showcases installations, performances, and on-air projects as models of experimental radio cultures within a social context. The artistic works concern themselves primarily with the future of the medium of radio," says the web site. "The goal of RadioREVOLTEN is to develop models of a new artistic appropriation of the medium of radio, to present these within in the framework of the exhibition, and to test them within the programming of Radio Corax. The Relating Radio conference also offers a forum for theoretical and aesthetic contributions. Together, the exhibition and conference seek to provide the impulse to seriously rethink the medium of radio."

Friz's "You Are Far From Us: solo for 4 transmitters and 50+ receivers" takes place Oct. 3. Friz writes, "The radio of the present is filled with reports of the dead. Rather than dream again of the radio transmitting messages from those who have passed away, what communication might we be missing from those living around us? What nearly inaudible signals, transmitted in moments of intensity, crisis, or near death, might we hear if the radio was tuned to hear? What do people seek to transmit, in a moment between the intake of breath and the breath held, waiting, in tension? You Are Far From Us reflects the mortal dreams of radio, where union with others may be impossible, but where the radio could nonetheless have a potential for conscience and consciousness. This is a search for a poetics of radio, made of intimate sounds revealed, performed by a chorus of receivers." Her presentation is co-produced by free103point9. Friz gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

The Swiss group Blablabor (Reto Friedmann and Annette Schmucki) sound out the different qualities of radio receivers with the radio play "ungefähre" (approximate). "Each radio reproduces the aired information due to its own specific sound quality, thus the "ungefähre“ never sounds the same, but is always also a result of being rendered by differently sounding radios. Blablabor layout their live radio show like conducting an orchestra, in a way, announcing the next radio receiver to be highlighted, and thus introducing the issues (and philosophical notions) of accuracy, approximation, or relativity as well as tranformation and volatility to the compositional process." They are performing this tonight at the Museum for Applied Arts in Vienna.

SilenceRadio.org is a Brussels-based project which offersseasonal issues of ten new audio pieces which intend to question the contemporary mediascape through the field of creative radio. From rough footage to electro-acoustic composition, from field-recording to archive, from noise to silence, from documentary to drama, from politics to poetry, SilenceRadio.org stands as an eclectic and colourful audio bazaar with an accent of manifesto for something we would call the 'art of listening'.

For their next issue, they are launching an open call for remixes of SilenceRadio.org. If you're interested in making a remix out of the existing pieces, feel free to contact them at courrier @ silenceradio.org. We'll publish the best remixes in the next issue. Deadline: 1 December.

Doreen Carvajal paints a grim picture for shortwave radio in the International Herald Tribune.

Next month, Germany's public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, will end its German-language shortwave broadcasts aimed at Canada and the United States.

The Japanese public broadcaster, NHK, and the Korean Broadcasting System are also reducing shortwave services.

The leading international broadcaster, the BBC World Service, is pursuing a diversification strategy that regards the future in stark terms. "Audience needs are changing and technology is moving rapidly," reads the news service's explanation of its strategy through 2010. "Shortwave is also declining at a fast pace and if we don't change, we will die."

By Tom Roe

In October 1997, a Wall Street Journal front-page profile of Tampa's "Party Pirate" -- who was selling hundreds of transmitters to microcasters around the U.S., and was showing up in the ratings with his own illicit station in Tampa -- was the last affront for the Federal Communications Commission after hearing about thousands of micro-stations avoiding their regulatory scheme.

The next month the agency cracked down hard on many "pirates," including a three-station 6 a.m. sweep with SWAT teams and media-alerted helicopters in Tampa, that shut down 87X, Radio Free Lutz, and Brewer's "Party Pirate."

(And then, a few months later, a legal commercial station in Tampa promoted a format change by pretending to be a pirate station broadcasting from a boat in Tampa Bay. The media thing can swirl full circle quickly.)

Well, maybe we are in for the same cycle. The Associated Press is circulating a story by Martha Mendoza, here in the International Herald Tribune and Washington Post, called "Pirate radio challenges U.S. officials as it proliferates." This is virtually the same sort of overview the Journal wrote nine years ago -- a large, high-profile pirate radio story that will have pencil pushers talking at the FCC's water coolers on Monday and have writers in other cities thinking about their local angle.

After humilating coverage the past week about two reports the FCC repressed or shredded to avoid alerting the public that media consolidation is statistically worse for the public, what might happen next? A wave of "pirate busts"?

The story says, "A record 181 unlicensed broadcasters received fines, cease and desist letters, or had been raided by early September, up from 143 enforcement actions in all of 2005 and 92 in 2004, according to John Anderson," who researches FCC enforcement at University of Illinois, and at DIYmedia.net. The story also says the FCC's 2007 budget includes an extra $1 million-plus to buy "Mobile Digital Direction Finding Vehicles" that locate so-called "pirate" radio stations.

The story is also positive for microcasters, tracking Stephen Dunifer's Radio Camps in Berkeley, California, and public battles for the airwaves in Santa Cruz, California, and Brattleboro, Vermont. The FCC's longtime spokesman David Fiske says, "If there are more enforcement actions, that's because there have been more complaints."

If the success of several microradio activities is a popular subject in the media again, does that mean even more enforcement and larger budget increases? It doesn't seem a likely political distraction for this fall's Congressional elections, but, maybe after this new wave of media coverage, there will be more complaints.

By Tom Roe

After a week when not one, but two studies turned up buried at the Federal Communications Commission, now they are attacking the deaf.

The American Association of People with Disabilities (see below) says the FCC is creating many new exemptions so broadcasters can get out of their closed-captioning responsibilities.

This emerges into the media after last week when the Associated Press reported, "The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says." A second, earlier, study that showed similar evidence of the negative consequences of media consolidation was also hidden from public view by FCC staff. Read Robert McChesney's analysis here.

So, perhaps, the government regulators are trying to weaken the closed captioning system because it doesn't just help the deaf watch television, but it also creates text archives of what is said on television. These closed-captioned texts are the sort of statistical data that the FCC could study and then later hide from the public.

From the American Association of People with Disabilities:

On Wed. Sept 13, 2006, the FCC issued one of the worst decisions it has ever issued on closed captioning.... Basically the order grants two requests for exemptions from the requirement to closed caption, a requirement in place since 1996 and that has ensured more and more closed captioning on television.

In taking this action, the FCC states that it is "inclined favorably" to grant new exemption requests to organizations that do "not receive compensation from video programming distributors from the airing of [their] programs," and who also say they "may terminate or substantially curtail [their] programming" or "[curtail] other activities important to [their] mission" if forced to caption.

The gist of what the FCC has done is to open the door to many more exemptions. It appears also the FCC's action creates a rule change that defines a new category of exemption from the captioning rules, cutting the legs out from the current "undue burden" proof currently needed to get an exemption for captioning requirement.

What the FCC has done is very serious. This new interpretation of the rules for asking for an exemption from having to closed caption has far reaching effects that go well beyond the specific TV programming in these two Orders and could extend to any entity, regardless of its resources, if they can make a case that "we can’t afford it" or "it ‘might’ shut us down."

Trampoline Nottingham: Platform for New Media Art Call for Submissions Urban Play
www.trampoline.org.uk
Deadline: Oct. 23 for Nov. 23 event

The theme is Urban Play: The city is paved with pixels, the flow of traffic becomes the flow of bits, the flow of people, the flow of electrons. Streets and circuit diagrams become meshed. The race has begun. Each one of us becomes a player in the game of the city, furiously manipulating the control pad, tapping buttons, flicking switches. Leaping from platforms, scaling the walls – the concrete/media playground is before us. Hurtling around corners, lunging up surfaces, shooting through the streets. Join the rush and surge of the city, find new ways to play the game.

Trampoline invites you to participate in ‘Urban Play’ a one-day event held on November 23, 2006 in Nottingham, UK. Its objective is to merge video gaming, art and design with the investigation of the city space. The structures of the city are increasingly pervaded by new media with screens, cctv, electronic networks, mobile devices, implements often designed to control our movement through urban space and even to remove us from our surroundings. We wish to investigate how new media can form an even tighter relationship with our immediate environment – challenge and subvert its conventional structures – hacking the city.

The Federal Communications Commission has shredded unflattering studies before, it turns out.

Adam Candeub leaked the "Review of the Radio Industry" or "The Media Bureau Staff Research Paper Series" (read the PDF at stopbigmedia.com and listen to the WBAI interview here). "I think they saw their job as to sort of paint a factual reality consistent with what their bosses wanted. And this report was not part of that factual reality they wanted around," said Candeub.

Both studies found that industry consolidation since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been harmful to the radio industry. The other study, leaked by a different lawyer last week, showed that locally-owned stations provide more local coverage and services than nationally-owned chains.

We would love to hear some comments back from anyone who has Skypecasted. What is the sound quality like? You need to have a Skypecast account to host it, or to participate? Up to 100 folks can participate for free, apparently.

Please add a comment if you have had any experience with Skyecasting. Thanks.

New Works Residencies 2007

The Harvestworks Artist In Residence Program offers commissions of up to $4000 to make a new work in our state of the art digital media facility. Each artist receives a $700 fee with the balance of the award posted in a' "facilities account" which is used to manage and produce the work. The artist works with a team comprised of a project manager, engineer and programmer (if required).

New works may include the creation of a new video work with a surround sound audio mix, audio recording and mastering of a surround sound piece, the creation of a new web art work and the development of a live interactive music/video/installation system using Max/MSP/Jitter. Up to 12 residencies will be selected (depending on project size and funding) along with two alternates in the event any resident artist cannot participate. Priority will be given to the creative use of the Harvestworks' production facility and the innovative use of sound and/or picture. Emerging artists and artists of color are encouraged to apply.

Postmark Deadline = November 1, 2006

It seems that famed jazz players Les Paul and Earnie Newton may have run a low-power FM station out of an apartment building in New York City in the 1940s, if page 110 of the July 1940 issue of Popular Science magazine is to be believed.

Perhaps with equipment they purloined from NBC? With a cat named Static?

This astonishing story details how the Federal Communications Commission ordered a study about media ownership concentration, and then tried to make it go away when they didn't like the results.

From Associated Press

The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says.

The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation hearing for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. received a copy of the report “indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made public,” according to Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that “every last piece” of the report be destroyed. “The whole project was just stopped _ end of discussion,” he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC’s Media Bureau at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its authors, he said.

In a letter sent to Martin Wednesday, Boxer said she was “dismayed that this report, which was done at taxpayer expense more than two years ago, and which concluded that localism is beneficial to the public, was shoved in a drawer.”

Martin said he was not aware of the existence of the report, nor was his staff. His office indicated it had not received Boxer’s letter as of midafternoon Thursday.

In the letter, Boxer asked whether any other commissioners “past or present” knew of the report’s existence and why it was never made public. She also asked whether it was “shelved because the outcome was not to the liking of some of the commissioners and/or any outside powerful interests?”

The report, written by two economists in the FCC’s Media Bureau, analyzed a database of 4,078 individual news stories broadcast in 1998. The broadcasts were obtained from Danilo Yanich, a professor and researcher at the University of Delaware, and were originally gathered by the Pew Foundation’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The analysis showed local ownership of television stations adds almost five and one-half minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three minutes of “on-location” news. The conclusion is at odds with FCC arguments made when it voted in 2003 to increase the number of television stations a company could own in a single market. It was part of a broader decision liberalizing ownership rules.

At that time, the agency pointed to evidence that “commonly owned television stations are more likely to carry local news than other stations.”

When considering whether to loosen rules on media ownership, the agency is required to examine the impact on localism, competition and diversity. The FCC generally defines localism as the level of responsiveness of a station to the needs of its community.

The 2003 action sparked a backlash among the public and within Congress. In June 2004, a federal appeals court rejected the agency’s reasoning on most of the rules and ordered it to try again. The debate has since been reopened, and the FCC has scheduled a public hearing on the matter in Los Angeles on Oct. 3.

The report was begun after then-Chairman Michael Powell ordered the creation of a task force to study localism in broadcasting in August of 2003. Powell stepped down from the commission and was replaced by Martin in March 2005. Powell did not return a call seeking comment.

The authors of the report, Keith Brown and Peter Alexander, both declined to comment. Brown has left public service while Alexander is still at the FCC. Yanich confirmed the two men were the authors. Both have written extensively on media and telecommunications policy.

Yanich said the report was “extremely well done. It should have helped to inform policy.”

Boxer’s office said if she does not receive adequate answers to her questions, she will push for an investigation by the FCC inspector general.

This article is from Associated Press. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their website and register an account to view all their articles on the web. Support quality journalism.

The sector of wireless communications is today among the most dynamic ones of our global economy, and it brings a major contribution to the latter’s performance and productivity. The extraordinary progress of wireless technologies over the past decade, and their penetration deeply into society has generated both a technology push and a user demand, which meet in the solicitation from researchers further progress and more innovation. Not only higher bandwidth, higher mobility, better QoS are required at lower costs, but also novel multimedia services in order to cope with new societal needs. The integration of a variety of radio access technologies and networks, from cellular to local and personal or body area networks, is thus in the near future projected to provide individuals in the private or professional sphere more and more ubiquitous and rich content access to a wealth of interconnected information systems.

Technical papers describing original, previously unpublished research results are solicited. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: Modulation and Coding for Wireless Communications; Signal Processing, Synchronization, Equalization; Communication Theory, Fundamental Limits; Radio Channel Measurements and Modelling; Antenna Issues in Wireless Communications; Smart antennas and MIMO systems; Radio Transmission Technology; Multiple Access Schemes; Multiuser detection algorithms and Theory; Interference Mitigation and Management Techniques; Wireless Broadband Mobile Access; Software Defined Radio & Re-configurability; Network Coding and Cooperative Diversity; Protocols for Air Interfaces and Networks; Transport Layer Issues in Mobile and Wireless Networks; Radio Resource Management; Ultra-Wideband Communications; Cross-layer Design in Mobile and Wireless Networks; Mobility Management and Billing Technologies; QoS and Resource Allocation in Mobile and Wireless; Networks Security and Robustness in Wireless Networks; Spectrum Efficiency Analyses; Cognitive Radio; Power Management for Small Terminals; Mobile/Wireless Networks Modelling and Simulation; 2G - 3G - 4G Migration, Evolution and Interworking; Wireless LAN/PAN/BAN; Wireless Ad-hoc Networks (MANET); Sensor Network Planning and Deployment; Convergence of 3G wireless, Brodcasting and Internet; Heterogeneity in Future Networks; Mobile and Wireless Applications; Location-based Services and Positioning; and High Altitude Platforms and Satellites.

All paper submissions will be handled electronically, following instructions found at: http://www.ew2007.org/submissions.html

All papers will be reviewed by the program committee members. Accepted papers will be published in the conference CD-ROM. The copyright will be held by VDE.

While $37 is still too much to pay for a lifetime without batteries (especially if the move to digital signals makes these fairly useless in the near future), solar-power design is getting better all the time. Supposedly, each hour of sunlight gives you up to three hours of listening time.

Since two cups and a string make up one of the most primitive transmission systems, folks at free103point9 have long wondered about the most efficient cup and string for communication. Years ago, our co-conspirator Jason Wilson submitted this question to The Mad Scientist Network and got this answer from Arnd Pralle Post-doc/Fellow, Mol. Cell Biol., UC Berkeley:

What are the best (most resonant) materials for a string and cup phone?

I am no expert in acoustics or material science, however since it a nice question showing the difficulties to get a practical estimate from basic physical principles, I have tried to find an answer based on physics which can be found in any general textbook.

Let's look at the two parts of the string and cup phone:
The string transmits the vibrations by oscillating laterally. To do this best, it has to fulfill the following:

The elasticy along the string (E) should be minimal while the lateral flexibility (G) maximal. The properties of solids, including metal wires do not show a very large G/E ratio (steel or iridium wires would be best).

However polymers would be much better suited for the task. They should be thin to avoid damping by the surrounding air and it should be lightweight, to minimize the tension necessary to hold it up.

So the best bet seems to be a polymer, e.g. nylon string. I would recommend using a kite-string, the thinnest one available.

The cup of a string and cup phone collects the acoustic wave which causes the bottom of the cup to vibrate. Therefore it is a good idea to have a truncated cone-shaped cup with rigid (thicker) sides that reflect the sound wave onto the bottom. The bottom has to be resonant. The top (opening) of the cup should fit the size of the users head for easiest use. The bottom size should relate to the frequency of human language and the most sensitive range of our ears which peaks around 500-1500 Hz. Depending on the bottom's design, I would estimate a diameter of 8-15cm. Just think about your medium speakers. When one looks at speakers or drums, it is clear that a thin membrane would be the best resonantor. However, the resonance frequency of a membrane depends largely on the lateral tension. Because in the phone the membrane has to support the wire, this tension could not be optimized for the frequency but must support the string. Therefore a thin plate is a much more suitable bottom resonator. Again, similar considerations as for the string apply: either a thin steel foil/sheet would be good, or again a polymer bottom plate seems optimal. Actually, the use of yogurt cups does seem to be a rather smart choice.

Special considerations for outside installation: weather resistance (thermal expansion is so small in normal temperature range that it can be ignored).