Moogfest 2016

Exploring radio as technology, concept, and practice; reflecting on its history for facilitating democratic expression; and looking to radio’s future as an evolving sound medium for artists, documentarians, musicians, educators, and performers. Within an event space transformed as a multi-channel low-watt radio installation – with a sonic basis of manipulations of the atomic clock – four artists provide commentary on how the traditions of radio inform the modern application of sound: radio artist and composer Anna Friz on the historical theory and practice of the art of radio transmission; transmission artist Jeff Kolar on using current considerations for radio as an apparatus for sonification of the electromagnetic spectrum; screenwriter and radio producer Sharon Mashihi on the performance of audio narrative; and audio artist Kaitlin Prest on theoretical possibilities for podcasting as an art form. These analyses are supported through performances by these artists in pairs, exhibiting the cross-disciplinary aspects of radio practice: Friz and Kolar perform radio as instrument, giving subtle treatment to the airwaves and unstable circuits from which highly detailed landscapes emerge; and Prest and Mashihi perform radio as theatre to launch an investigation into sound, object, and the ways that human beings torment themselves.