Magz Hall

I have been working in the field of radio art, and through creative practice have been considering how the convergence of new media technologies has redefined radio art, addressing the ways in which this has extended the boundaries of the art form. This practice-based research explores the rich history of radio as an artistic medium and the relationship between the artist and technology, emphasising the role of the artist as a mediator between broadcast institutions and a listening public. It considers how radio art might be defined in relation to sound art, music and media art, mapping its shifting parameters in the digital era and prompting a consideration of how radio appears to be moving from a dispersed ‘live’ event to one consumed ‘on demand’ by a segmented audience across multiple platforms. Exploring the implications of this transition through my radio practice focuses upon the productive tensions which characterise the artist’s engagement with radio technology, specifically between the autonomous potentialities offered by the reappropriation of obsolete technology and the proliferation of new infrastructures and networks promised by the exponential development of new media. Switch Off takes as its overarching theme the possible futures for FM radio, incorporating elements from eight ‘trace’ stations, produced as a series of radio actions investigating these tensions. Interviews have been conducted with case study subjects Vicki Bennett, Anna Friz, LIGNA, Hildegard Westerkamp and Gregory Whitehead, whose work was chosen as being exemplary of the five recurrent facets of radio arts practice I have identified: Appropriation, Transmission, Activism, Soundscape and Performance. These categories are derived from the genealogy of experimental radiophonic practice set out in Chapter One.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2016! The Academic Series for Radio Survivor has been a little quiet over the past few months, but we have a lot of exciting posts planned for this academic term. We’re happy to be back with a two-part interview with Dr. Magz Hall, who is a sound and radio artist and a Senior Radio Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University.

This paper considers how I used the Internet to promote analogue radio art projects, focusing on Switch Off a PhD radio art project, which took as its theme the imagined futures of FM analogue radio when abandoned by sanctioned broadcasters, presenting future sonic possibilities of analogue FM radio after a 'digital switch-over' one which has been proposed (and as yet postponed) by the UK government and how this works within a post digital understanding of radio and the net. It also considers the problems of using the net as archive for radio art works.

The paper examines soundscape when it is produced as a form of Radio Art, considering a series of soundscape compositions which have moved away from a soundscape merely played on the radio to an expanded form which embraces and explore the particularities of the medium. The paper is contextualised with an overview of artists who have produced soundscape for radio such as Hildegard Westerkamp and Chris Cutler and those who used ‘transmission art’ as live soundscape such as Hill Kobayashi and Locus Sonus. Drawing on an early work by Max Neuhaus Drive In Music (1967) the paper then outlines a live action Sound Train (2012) a soundscape illegally broadcast on a train journey between Canterbury and London using an FM pirate transmitter and Still moving sculpture, off the pier (2013) a three channel FM broadcast installation co-produced with Jim Backhouse.

‘Radio After Radio: Redefining Radio Art in the light of new media technology through expanded practice’ is the title of my PhD practice based research. This paper focuses on the extended boundaries of Radio Art, considering how Radio Art might be defined in relation to sound art, music and media art. Mapping the shifting parameters of Radio Art in the digital era has prompted a consideration of how radio can be seen to be moving from being a predominantly shared ‘live’ event to one consumed 'on demand' by a fragmented audience across a multiplicity of platforms. I have been exploring the implications of this transition through my radio practice which focuses upon the productive tensions which characterise the artist’s engagement with radio technology, specifically between the autonomous potentialities offered by the reappropriation of obsolete technology and the new infrastructures and networks promised by the exponential development of new media.  The radio installations outlined here Radio Mind and Numbers are individual works which form part of a suite of pre-recorded works for 'Switch Off' , a 5.1 project which takes as its overarching theme the possible futures for FM radio incorporating elements from a series of eight ‘trace’ stations, produced as a series of radio actions, installations, broadcasts and interventions between 2007 and 2013.

"During the weekend of October 12-14 2012, corresponding with the Hudson Valley’s peak fall foliage weekend, free103point9 will host a first Transmission Arts Colloquium. This gathering includes an exciting international roster of participants with expertise regarding the issues informing the transmission arts genre. Attendees were selected so to comprise an intimate group, whose discussions during the colloquium will be shared with public audiences through broadcast and publication. Participants include:

John Anderson (DIYMedia.net/Brooklyn College, Brooklyn)
Manuel Cirauqui (Dia Art Foundation, New York)
Christoph Cox (Bard College/Hampshire College, NH)
Anna Friz (Artist, Chicago/Montreal)
Magz Hall (Canterbury Christ Church University/University of the Arts London)
Galen Joseph-Hunter (free103point9, Acra)
Jeff Kolar (Radius, Chicago)
Bonnie Marranca (PAJ Publications, New York)
Valerie Tevere (CUNY Staten Island, New York)
Tom Roe (free103point9, Acra)
Gregory Whitehead (Artist, Lenox, MA)
Jonathan Wright (Folkestone Fringe, Folkestone, UK)
Elisabeth Zimmerman (Kunstradio, Vienna)

Participants were each given one of three statements and questions to which they will respond during the Colloquium panels:

1) Transmission Arts and Contemporary Art Forms
Transmission Arts is a true form of Intermedia, developing an interface or dialogue between multiple media. If we define transmissions arts broadly as encompassing broadcast, installation, communication networks, composition and performance—in public spaces or on airwaves—what is your understanding of the potential of this mode of work for the future? What is your definition of "the contemporary" in transmission arts? Where is it pointing for the future?

2) Rethinking Transmission Media
From the early days of experimentation, electronic communication has inspired utopian aspirations among artists as a means to bring together diverse groups of people in an immersive human community. These ideals remained fervent in the digital age, where possibilities for instantaneous networks and intricate feedback circuitries offer the promise of interrelationships among unlimited numbers of participants. At the same time electronic communication may be equally described by imperfect conditions of dispersed feedback, partial and broken signal, and entropic decay.

Transmission art engages with these complex socio-technical conditions and circumstances of transmission, often as direct critique of state and/or corporate communication infrastructure and systems. How do they rethink transmission media in order to engage with the issues of power, ownership, and access to the electromagnetic spectrum? How do transmission artists approach the deep and unavoidable philosophical tension between utopian dreams of union and the status of interference and noise?

3) Ecology and Sustainability
If we think of artworks as part of an elaborate ecosystem—a community, incorporating artists and the public in cultural, economic, and political interconnectedness—how can we work toward sustainability? What tools do the different species of transmission arts have to develop creatively in this wider network of understanding? How can they evolve in the context of contemporary social and economic systems and the intermingling of art forms?"

"Radio art as practice based research

Explores the rich history of radio as an artistic medium considering how radio art might be situated in relation to more established discourses mapping the shifting parameters of radio art in the digital era; specifically how radio has moved from the shared 'live' event to one consumed \'on demand\' by a fragmented audience. The implications of this are explored through a radio practice which focuses on the productive tensions which characterise the artist's engagement with radio and technology and the autonomous potentialities offered by the reappropriation of obsolete technology and the networks promised by the exponential development of new media."

RADIO ACTIVE - Debate, 3rd August 2003, Media Mix Tent, Big Chill panel JOHN PEEL (Radio 1),CLIVE CRASKE (Big Chill FM / Greenradio), MAGZ HALL (Resonance FM/ youarehear.co.uk), LEGENDARY JESSE BELLE (Big Chill FM / www.bigchill.net), Hosted by ENCHANTED GORDON (ALL FM) www.bigchill.net www.youarehear.co.uk

The paper considers how I used the Internet to promote analogue radio art installations and projects, focusing on Switch Off my PhD radio art project, which took as its theme the imagined futures of FM analogue radio when abandoned by sanctioned broadcasters, presenting future sonic possibilities of analogue FM radio after a 'digital switch-over' one which has been proposed (and as yet postponed) by the UK government. A post digital understanding of radio art and current concerns for the internet as archive and my Radio Arts Gallery and commissioning project Dreamlands.

Radio After Radio: Redefining Radio Art in the Light of New Media Technology through Expanded Practice is the title of my PhD practice based research. This paper focuses on the extended boundaries of radio art, considering how radio art might be defined in relation to sound art, music, and media art. Mapping the shifting parameters of radio art in the digital era has prompted a consideration of how radio can be seen to be moving from being a predominantly shared "live" event to one consumed "on demand" by a fragmented audience across a multiplicity of platforms. I have been exploring the implications of this transition through my radio practice, which focuses upon the productive tensions that characterize the artist’s engagement with radio technology, specifically between the autonomous potentialities offered by the reappropriation of obsolete technology and the new infrastructures and networks promised by the exponential development of new media

In the UK there has never been much scope for radio art within the realm of public service broadcasting, leading artists to seek funding for their own independent projects, predominantly from the Arts Council of England (ACE) and other state funding bodies and charitable trusts. In this article, I will consider this recent avenue of practice, because its results - in terms of audience composition, artistic output and the wider cultural context of the form - shed light on both the particular context of radio art practice in the UK, and also have implications for the wider struggle for sustainable independent media networks against the diminished imaginative horizons of a public broadcast culture endlessly inured to 'unavoidable' cuts and the free market enclosure of the digital commons.