The second project I showed at Pixxelpoint last month was a version of a RootIO radio station called “Alert Transmissions,” essentially a festival radio station that ran for over a week. M-ITI researcher Petra Zist, coincidentally Slovenian, did a great job interviewing people, recording workshops, broadcasting concerts, and teaching community members how to run the radio; the last few days of transmission were all coordinated by locals who had never used the system before.
PixxelPoint 1/[n]
Last week I unleashed two projects Pixxelpoint, an electronic art and culture festival in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, and over the border in Gorizia, Italy. Slovenia is an epicenter of electronic art and posthumanism, having been a locus for the prescient net.art movement; supporting famous galleries like Kapelica and the Kersnikova Institute; and education programs turning out significant new media artists, like the one at University of Nova Gorica. It was a fantastic festival. Here are some photos of the DJ, I Robot Sound System v2020:
Radio Pfyn
I recently completed a two-week residency at the Transitorische Museum in Pfyn, Switzerland, where we set up Radio Pfyn, at 94.0 FM. Over the course of the two weeks, we set up a rootIO station, put together a schedule of music and oral histories from the extended collection of the museum. These were primarily interviews conducted over the last fifteen years with older members of the community, including the postman, the chief executive of the local mill, farmers, etc.
The museum is part of an extended art-as-life project by the team Meszmer-Muller, who I met some time ago and had invited me to be part of their residency. Their practice merges turning their house into a museum and archive of sound, photos, and films from their small community (population 2000), but also working with far-flung communities from Catalonia, to Alexandria, to Montevideo. They also work with local archeologists on the roman community that existed on the site of their home/museum, the foundation of which is literally the roman wall.
This was a slim version of rootIO, where we primarily used the phone as a streaming point by the transmitter, and ran the programming from what Zeitgarten had at hand — iTunes. Their program grew to 24 hours of interviews and music over the course of the week. Various community members told us they were listening, from the protestant priest to the local garden shop.
Coverage of the project at https://www.tagblatt.ch/amp/kultur/radio-pfyn-geht-auf-sendung-ld.1138930
