__PUBLISH__ Read & Repair - Wireless Imagination feat. Danny van der Kleij Sunday, 31st January 2021. 10:30-12:00 CET The text selection for January was made by Varia Library group member Danny van der Kleij. Danny is active in various loosely organized online communities and collectives. Most of his work these days revolves around experiments in online radio, plaintext and supposedly obsolete consumer electronics. He is currently a tutor at ArtEZ Graphic Design in Arnhem. In this online edition of Read & Repair participants will be invited to pick and mix from different texts ranging from pirate radio zines, media theory on the ephemerality of radio, and accounts of community radio politics. Welcome to our *pad* , aka Etherpad, an open-source, web-based collaborative real-time editor, that allows authors to simultaneously edit a text document, and see all of the participants' edits in real-time. As you may be noticing it also displays each author's text in their own color. Etherpads typically also have a chat box as another form of communication between editors. --[meet]-[here]--> Jitsi call link to tune in and say hello to each other---> https://meet.jit.si/wirelessimagination Padtiquette: » Be supportive and curious. Consider that nobody knows you besides what you write. Meaning, be extra nice with your words. » If you have a question, ask. This is an experiment in doing a workshop together textually from a distance. » Don't delete text from other people, you can add your thoughts next to their sentences or even in between. Texts: One of the last chapters of Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism by Christina Dunbar-Hester. This chapter speaks on the shift in politics from wireless radio transmissions to community Wi-fi. http://crunk.website/texts/DoNewMediaHaveOldPoliticsOCR.pdf A Conversation befween Jerome Noetinger and Gregory Whitehead. Gregory Whitehead is an internationally acclaimed radiomaker, audio artist, text/sound poet, singer of tales, essayist, playwright and desperado philosopher. A conversation on the materiality of Radio. http://crunk.website/texts/RadioPlayIsNoPlace.pdf Teknix, excerpts from TX zine, practical texts about how to run your own pirate radio station in 80s London. http://crunk.website/texts/TxMagazineOCR.pdf INSTRUCTIONS: 1.To bring back the feeling of community/pirate/amateur radio. Read and mark/note words/sentences/paragraph from the texts connected to the topic. (choose one or more of the three texts, see line 19) Share with the group the words/sentences/paragraphs you noted. copy paste in the pad under the section Community Radio Shoutouts(Free editing/copy pasting zone): parts of text that deserve an actual shout out end the line with the magic shout out command 2. If the reading material reminds you of any songs or other pieces of music feel free to provide a youtube link to that track in the section Soundtrack to reading material: 3. With some heavily experimental software I will try to combine our collective reading and sharing efforts into a small temporary radio show. (Broadcast starting at ~12:00 CET) Community Radio Shoutouts(Free editing/copy pasting zone): Transmissions as electronic civil disobedience __SHOUTOUT__ What [matters] is the play among relationships: between bodies and antibodies, hosts and parasites, pure noise and irresistible fact, all in a strange parade, destination unknown, fragile, uncertain. __SHOUTOUT__ you wouldn't really want to do something like that, would you now? __SHOUTOUT__ Radio is an entrenched and well-understood artifact. hire a cheap bedsit or an office somewhere, making sure you aren't going to disturb the neighbours with a constant trek of people going to and from the studio day and night. Does a radio work exist if not heard by an audience? __SHOUTOUT__ paste cork tiles / thick carpet / egg boxes (if you really can't afford anything else) on the walls __SHOUTOUT__ to my ears radio waves fascinate because they are so dirty. that is, the airwaves are so full of voices and bodies trying, in one form or another, to get into the ears of somebody else. Stripped of its raucous Babel of attempted and aborted contacts, radio becomes just another noisemaker, and we already have plenty of those. __SHOUTOUT__ unless you are willing to electrify yourself and enter directly into the flow of relations, the Limbo Zone of transmission, then you're not really doing anything more than pushing buttons, and that just isn't enough anymore. __SHOUTOUT__ the Internet ends the problem of broadcast scarcity __SHOUTOUT__ programme schedules, advert schedules and other important notices should be placed on the wall where they can easily be seen - this is where the cork tiles have another use. “Everybody has a radio, not everybody has a computer." __SHOUTOUT__ use a house belonging to one of the presenters. Alternatively, hire a eheap bedsit er effice somewhere __SHOUTOUT__ microradio advocates considered the possibil- ity of using the Internet for “webcasting,” if two people sitting next to each other can agree to pay attention to one another, they can hear each other. __SHOUTOUT__ Multiple whispered conversations can simultaneously occur in the same room. <<<<< CONTINUED NEXT MONTH >>>>> __SHOUTOUT__ A happy DJ makes for a happy programme __SHOUTOUT__ READERS ARE REMINDED THAT THE OPERATION OF UNAUTHORISED TRANSMISSION EQUIPMENT IN THE UK IS ILLEGAL__SHOUTOUT__ This is the application that most excited the activists. __SHOUTOUT__ I feel like a Mcdonald's training manager saying that ... __SHOUTOUT__ We care about radio, but we believe in appropriate technology. __SHOUTOUT__ you set it up, you talk into it, people tune in, on their car radios or what- ever. <<<<< CONTINUED NEXT MONTH >>>>>> __SHOUTOUT__ You'll need to have a friendly landlord who won't mind the 80 foot mast on the roof__SHOUTOUT__ Do we really want to fix media identities so strictly? __SHOUTOUT__ pirates are moving on all the time. In the future we may see lasers being used aa links __SHOUTOUT__ These screams are allowed to accumulate over several weeks, then are assembled and intercut into a local screamscape, which is then broadcast, with phone lines remaining open. __SHOUTOUT__ secret communications in battle! __SHOUTOUT__ live tower block broadcasting, as opposed to fixed site operation “I love radio, but it’s not going to be the same in ten years.” __SHOUTOUT__ You mention the Last Scream - but what about the Primal Scream? Ah yes, the Scream of Screams. __SHOUTOUT__ Getting onto the roof is a comparatively easy matter. __SHOUTOUT__ ALICE'S RESTAURANT SET UP ANOTHER TRANSMITTER SITE __SHOUTOUT__ the infamous biscuit tins __SHOUTOUT__ It’s not the boxes that deliver [media content] that {are] important [for our mission], but the idea of community media. __SHOUTOUT__ attached with gaffer tape to a suitable pole __SHOUTOUT__ there is no necessary or automatic relationship bewrteen communications technologies and community. The slogan that "communication equals community" is only true when people are willing to work very hard to achieve it, and are then willing to fight to preserve the fragile community they have built. There is a utopian aspiration in all communication technologies,but the utopian side is counter-balanced and all too often cancelled out by the darker drive, the connection between information and war, between communication and the command or control over communities. This is the other side of Radio Utopia: Radio Thanatos, and I hear it more now than ever, whether in Sarajevo, China, or in the streets of Los Angeles. The root for "utopia" is the Greek or'r topos, or "no place." And radio is perhaps the most powerful and destructive No Place ever conceived or conjured __SHOUTOUT__ more gaffer tape around it to keep out the rain __SHOUTOUT__ to be unafraid of technology and to challenge expertise. __SHOUTOUT__ large corporate owner of radio stations wanted to trade me my website for their 1,200 radio stations, I’d do it tomorrow... __SHOUTOUT___ DINOSAURS! __SHOUTOUT__ Wounds can bleed or they can sing: the difference is a matter of technique __SHOUTOUT__ The fact is, we cannot find our voice just by using it: we must be willing to cut it out of our throats, put it on the autopsy table, isolate and savor the various quirks and pathologies, then stitch it back together and see what happens. The voice, then, not as something which is found, but as something which is written. __SHOUTOUT__ something that will be meaningful for that [nearby] group of people. __SHOUTOUT__ the prosthesis can be a twitching finger of ecstasy as much as the trigger finger of death. Wounds can bleed or they can sing: the difference is a matter of technique __SHOUTOUT__ I've always liked the French word animateur with regards to the media, that is, the one who might breathe life into an apparatus, even as an artificial respirator, but who then withdraws. If you need to be in control from start to finish, then in a sense, nothing is happening. __SHOUTOUT__ you're broadcasting from a [radio transmitter mounted inside a lunchbox]. __SHOUTOUT__ webcast doesn’t seem like a community resource anymore __SHOUTOUT__ an alternative mother, the no-place that may be the mother of us all: a radio __SHOUTOUT__ between bodies and antibodies, hosts and parasites, pure noise and irresistible fact __SHOUTOUT__ They called wi-fi an “appropriate technology,” in a rhetorical effort to bring it into alignment with other small- or community-scale tech- nologies they favored. __SHOUTOUT__ the ghost question:'Who's there?' __SHOUTOUT__ inside the echo chamber resounds the most unnerving question of all__SHOUTOUT__ “There is a tendency among nerds to find technology to solve social problems. I would say it’s just the opposite, you have to use the society to govern the technology.” __SHOUTOUT__ a shout in the dark __SHOUTOUT__ to my ears radio waves fascinate because they are so dirRRRRtyyy!!! that is, the airwaves are so full of voices and bodies trying, in one form or another, to get into the ears of somebody else __SHOUTOUT__ "scream donors" to an answering machine "screambank" __SHOUTOUT__ lawmakers and some nonprofit organizations tended to represent the “users” as wards of the state. __SHOUTOUT__ community wireless network indicates open, freely accessible, nonproprietary systems built using the buying power and economies of scale within neighborhoods, towns, and cities. __SHOUTOUT__ radio is certainly most captivating as a...no-place where the living can dance with the dead, where voices can gather, mix, become something else, and then disappear into the night-degenerates in dreamland. __SHOUTOUT__ searching for the weird signals befween the stations, composite voices, strange languages collapsing into each other - voices of the dead __SHOUTOUT__ biscuit tin - with more gaffer tape round it to keep out of the rain. __SHOUTOUT__ Neighbors for Access to Technology (NAT) __SHOUTOUT__ American Talk Radio, a different category of white noise. __SHOUTOUT__ one nervous system to another __SHOUTOUT__ shout shout let it all out 🕬 __SHOUTOUT__ media screamland blue __SHOUTOUT__ Activists worried that wi-fi was a bloodless issue: no one was ready to “fall on a bayonet” or go to jail for wireless. __SHOUTOUT__ “The problem with using open source is that it puts [the radio station’s operating system] more into the hands of the cadre of nerds—it’s not a platform that as many people know, which, practically, is a problem, even though politically it’s great.” __SHOUTOUT__ ... there is no necessary or automatic relationship between communications technologies and community __SHOUTOUT__ an overt challenge to elitism in technical practice __SHOUTOUT__ Often, the thing [our society] understands best to do with [technology] is to oppress people.... __SHOUTOUT__ The fact is, we cannot find our voice just by using it: we must be willing to cut it out of our throats, put it on the autopsy table, isolate and savor the various quirks and pathologies, then stitch it back together and see what happens. __SHOUTOUT__ unearthly quality of voice, through ail of its entranced and wild gyrations __SHOUTOUT__ "scream donors" to an answering machine "scream bank" located at the host station. These screams are allowed to accumulate over several weeks, then are assembled and intercut into a local screamscape. __SHOUTOUT__ the pure pleasure of speech in ruins __SHOUTOUT__ it is possible to imagine a world in which anyone can be a broadcaster. __SHOUTOUT__ Soundtrack to reading material: youtube links down here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqxXcWVnztA :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1lvEVg1T9k :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azdwsXLmrHE :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBbdp_02YaU :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glYhFaIxkFo :added: https://youtu.be/ci2oqlAJI-s :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qPdGNA_KM :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFL1pbbMjFQ& :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye7FKc1JQe4 :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPzMxB2uct0 ? YES of course why not. <3 Donna Summer :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlzM9YR-No4 added: https://youtu.be/N8h7mdMG3mg?t=166 is it possible until 4:40? I will see if I can do a quick cut out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LQrj2EB6ng <3 added: https://youtu.be/wU1ruLI4piE :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTICD_19kLg :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4ja7MNgBMs :added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuTlA9tU1aE :added: https://youtu.be/YTvU9j3og5k https://youtu.be/Rs_8Vuhh594 (so many good soundtracks!!)