www.simonwhetham.co.uk
"Channelling Airwaves" commission for German radio
"Channelling Airwaves" was commissioned by fellow artist Katharina Schmidt to create new "Channelling" piece for Deutschlandfunk Kultur / Klangkunst in co-production with Cashmere Radio.
The piece is composed from the sounds of analogue radio transmissions recorded in various locations in Bristol, UK, which have then been piped through a specific collection of devices salvaged from various media players with some link to music and radio. The devices are: a cassette player (which plays a tape loop of recorded radio sound), a MiniDisc player, a CD player and a record turntable motor, which in turn drives a second motor which becomes a dynamo.
The images above show stills from the short movie clips below. They show the devices in action during the recording stage of the project.
A little about the process and progress of the project...
As soon as I was invited to make the piece, I knew that I wanted to experiment with playing radio transmissions through a particular collection of devices. These would have to be somehow relevant to media players and music systems, but also fit inside a protective case, as I want to be able to travel with the setup and play live versions of the work. And the first thing I did was seek out and buy a radio that could receive a wide range of analogue broadcasting frequencies, especially shortwave signals as these are bouncing off the ionosphere so can be picked up great distances from their transmitting origin. I also wanted to hear and use the 'static' sounds which are an artefact you won't hear with digital radios (and TVs), and also the sound of tuning in to a recognisable broadcast, be that music, speech or tones that possibly carry some undecipherable information.
Images above show the Grundig Concert Boy I used to receive the radio transmissions used in the piece (left), a radio tower on a hillside overlooking the motorway that comes into Bristol (centre) where I recorded some of the signal and another site nearby which was a gun emplacement during the Second World War (right).
I have uploaded a couple of excerpts to Soundcloud and will add the link to the full piece when it is broadcast.
And below you can see the devices arranged in the protective travel case (left), plus a faulty walkman (right) kindly donated by Ali Robertson which gave me the cassette player device for the setup, but I had to add an external tape head amplifier to be able to hear the tape.
