The long tail of expanded radio and sound art
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 how this has extended the boundaries of the art form. This paper explores the relationship between the sound artist and technology, emphasising the role of the artist as a mediator between broadcast institutions and a listening public.
Artists have embraced podcasts and online streaming as a way of sharing their authentic self by social media, such narrow cast streams are now an essential part of the radio and sound artist marketing toolkit. Lockdown also played a part in art organisations commissioning radio art projects. However, does an ever-fragmenting plethora of sites means we are not waving but drowning? Are more traditional radio networks and online hubs still an important place to share work.
I will explore how as an artist I have used expanded radio and sound art practice to reach wider audiences via the long tail of online platforms, allowing an extended afterlife to onsite site-specific sound projects.
My project Waves of Resistance for Galway 2020 is an example a sound art work made for remote listening on FM on the Island of Innis Orr, consumed later on demand by a segmented audience across multiple internet platforms as well national FM broadcasts via public radio and international via SW.
As radio genres are leaking into each other, creating non-genre-defined hybrids, (Crook, 2012, p.120). due to the freedoms created by podcasts and online media: radio has become what Michelle Hilmes terms, “soundwork‟ (2013, p.43), which it could be argued leaves the field so open that any digital sound clip becomes potentially part of radio’s, new materiality‟, which encompasses “the entire complex of sound based digital media‟ (ibid).
Such a contention, while representative of the contemporary territory of media convergence and the exponential proliferation of digital “content‟, also requires the careful consideration of the aesthetic and historical particularity of radio within this media ecology lest its aesthetic autonomy be subsumed into being simply another constituent part of the complex of sound-based digital media.
There is a movement away from any clear definition of radiophonic attributes; anything goes, it often seems, once the tag “radio” is applied this freeing up has widen the range of what is deemed as expanded radio art practice and begs the question, how do we navigate.
Leave a Reply