Somewhere a Voice is Calling
Performance by Absolute Value of Noise, Anna Friz, and Glenn Gear, © 2007

On Christmas Day 1906, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden transmitted music and voice across the Atlantic in the first radio broadcast in history. This broadcast changed the notion of radio as an open system of Morse-code style signals to a medium that could be used to deliver the voice of authority to the masses. Inspired by the history of Reginald Fessenden's voice on radio and the "secrets" of radiation, these three artists have been working with the themes of "invisible" sounds, hidden voices, the early days of radio communication (primarily on the Atlantic Ocean from 1900 - 1907), and micro-casting using low-power transmitters in performance spaces. Drawing from tales of ghost ships and myths from the early days of radio that claimed the seafaring dead could be contacted via shortwave, this performance conjures an ethereal world of distant voices, sea, and static.

Absolute Value of Noise plays with VLF (very low frequency) receivers to convert radiation (from transmitters, cell- phones, different wireless devices and electronic equipment) into audible sound. In this performance, he uses large circular antennas to draw strange noises from the equipment (transmitters, computers, speakers, etc.) of the other performers. The VLF receiver is similar to the early broadband receivers that were used to detect clicks and tones from spark-transmitters.

Anna Friz considers the very human desire for remote contact as manifest in the notion of "inaudible" transmissions (from the living or the dead). She works with extremely low-watt transmissions of voice and breath as captured through baby monitors, walkie talkies, and cordless phones. She is interested in the way this very mortal sound has been rendered both fragile and monstrous through the compression of lo-fidelity technologies. Anna diffuses these sounds through the performance space by using small FM transmitters and twelve receivers that are hung from the ceiling over the audience.

Glenn Gear works his amazing animations. Through video and software he creates dynamic visual montages - in this case focusing on the theme of the ocean, shipping, and early radio communication. In this performance, he works with the "distressed", ephemeral video image - exploring the signal and video noise that is generated through broadcast and independent transmissions (ghosts and echoes from the aural/visual aether).

Performances:
• "Somewhere a Voice is Calling" May 30, 2008, Deep Wireless Festival, Toronto, Ontario
• "Somewhere a Voice is Calling" January 17, 2007, Western Front, Vancouver, BC
• "Weincouver 1906" (simultaneous webcast with Volkmar Klein, Kunstradio, Vienna, Austria), January 14, 2007, Western Front, Vancouver, BC
• "Ship to Shore" (by Anna Friz and Glenn Gear) June 18, 2005, Suoni per il Popolo Festival, La Sala Rossa, Montréal, QC

 

(Photos from the Western Front, January 2007)