Call for Participants: DIY Radio Workshop & Urban Listening
5 May 2023 / 1-4pm / SONCITIES 41-47 Wellington Square Oxford OX1 2JF
SONCITIES is pleased to announce a radio workshop with Shortwave Collective exploring electromagnetic frequencies and urban listening, part of SONCITIES’ contribution to the upcoming Art of Noises VIII event at Modern Art Oxford.
Please register on Eventbrite here
This workshop is open to students in the Faculty of Music and Ruskin School of Art in the University of Oxford. When registering please use your university email address. We can accommodate up to 10 participants in the workshop.
Workshop:
Members of Shortwave Collective will run a workshop on building simple DIY radios, sharing radio recipes to create Open Wave-Receivers, devices that enable participants to search for transmissions and experience the radio spectrum in new and surprising ways. The workshop will also be the basis for a collaborative listening experiment, with participants hooking up their radios in sites around Oxford, incorporating urban fixtures (fences, barriers, bins) into the radio circuit.
The Open Wave-Receiver is a no-power listening device based on crystal and Foxhole radios. The Collective's naming of it has multiple connotations; openness to receive simultaneous frequencies, an open unfixed circuit that can have exchanged components, and an open process of co-learning and experimentation in which they are made. Each attendee will make their own Open Wave-Receiver in the workshop.
Following the workshop attendees are invited to create a sound work using their radios for exhibition, together with the radio itself, in the EMPRES Art of Noises VIII event at Modern Art Oxford with SONCITIES on May 25th.
Shortwave Collective is an international, feminist artist group established in May 2020, interested in creative uses of radio. They meet regularly to discuss feminist approaches to amateur radio and the radio spectrum as artistic material, sharing resources, considering DIY approaches and inclusive structures.
Things to bring:
All materials will be provided, but in order to customise your radio please scavenge / bring some of the following to the workshop:
1. A base board, something flat and non-conductive that is solid enough to attach wires to, around A5 in size (a cardboard box / an old magazine / wood / thick fabric etc.)
2. A tube (also non-conductive), the size and shape of a toilet roll core (a jam jar / pipe / kitchen roll etc.)
3. Small pieces of metal or mineral (a spoon / screw / zip / crystal etc)
You can also bring a field recorder and a battery powered speaker if you have one.
Questions:
No previous radio experience is required for this workshop.
For questions, please email: Lisa Hall lisa.hall@music.ox.ac.uk
About:
This workshop has received funding from the European Research Council, as part of the project Sonorous Cities: Towards a Sonic Urbanism (soncities.org).
Sonorous Cities: Towards a Sonic Urbanism (SONCITIES) is a research project formed at the intersection of sound, urbanism, and critical spatial practices. Our aim is to better understand cities and urban life through a critical investigation of the sonic conditions of cities, and of people’s experiences of urban sound environments; to make critical and creative interventions into urban sound environments; and to support architects, designers, and spatial practitioners in embracing sonic modes of urban analysis and design.
The University of Oxford’s Electronic Music Practice RESearch group (EMPRES) aims to promote and advance research and public dissemination in Electronic Music Practice. It does so by working with musicians, composers, producers, researchers and academics from a wide range of disciplines interested in electronic music, as well as other members of the music industry.
Modern Art Oxford is one of the UK’s most exciting and influential contemporary arts organisations. Founded in 1965, it is the only public institution dedicated to contemporary visual arts in Oxford and is free and open to all. Shaped by a longstanding commitment to education and inclusion, Modern Art Oxford is renowned for its bold, progressive and international artistic programme that promotes culturally diverse viewpoints from around the world.
The Art of Noises VIII event on May 25th responds to Modern Art Oxford's solo exhibition by Carey Young, ‘Appearance’, which explores themes of power dynamics, relationships to space, text, feminism, and institutions of justice.
Photos: The first two images show Open Wave-Receiver (OWR) radios made by the "At the Library ...". The third image shows an OWR radio being connected to a fence in Oxford.