Solar Radio / Embodied Radio Device
An album featuring Absolute Value of Noise and Anna Friz © 2020.

Solar Radio is an automated radio station that is powered by the sun. It is a small artificial intelligence mechanism that wakes up at sunrise, mixes and broadcasts sound during the day, fades into the sunset, and goes back to sleep during the night. It watches the world through radio-based and bio-electric sensors - observing the state of the natural world and the sun. The AI tries to recreate the sounds of life in its immediate environment - imitating the sounds of insects, birds, frogs, magnetic phenomena, the wind moving through the trees, rain falling, and waves on the ocean.

Embodied Radio Device is a collaboration between Absolute Value of Noise and Anna Friz. The two team up to present a mixture of sounds based on artificial intelligence and human controlled synthesizer systems. Absolute Value of Noise's outdoor installation work - Solar Radio - provides the "artificial". It responds to its environment and the state of the sun by playing with simple AI sound synthesis algorithms. Anna Friz brings an analog feel to the piece, working with her voice and a variety of radio gadgets and cottage-built electronics. Here and there, Absolute Value of Noise adds a few breaths on the cornet.

You can listen to this album on Bandcamp

Solar Radio in the sun close up - cover art for SR / ERD, May 2020.

absolutevalueofnoise.ca   |   audio available on bandcamp