Human Radio - Winter 2013
Streaming technology in 2013 means it is now easier than ever for listeners to engage with audio. With the increased popularity of commercial music streaming software (and the technological advances that have led to these commercial products to offer impressive, automated "radio stations") the listener is given the freedom to curate and be especially curated for at his or her request. In an age when all of this is possible, is creation and curation of content under the banner of "independent broadcasting" still something that is worthwhile?
Human Radio is an investigative art project which seeks to explore the importance of humans in the audio broadcast chain. Creating and utilising both FM and online broadcast systems, the system is extremely reliant upon handmade and DIY technology. This means the output audio content is extremely unpredictable and susceptible to any number of factors, including radio wave interference, short term dropouts, unpredictable changes in broadcast frequencies, clipping at early stages of the broadcast chain and many others. These irregularities are expected and to some extent intended - the human "failures" in creating a clean, listenable audio output are equally as important as the human involvement itself.
At this stage (November 2013), I am presenting the live broadcast segment of Human Radio online as a prototype for a larger installation work. The stream is available for a limited time at humanradio.tumblr.com. After the live stream is complete, "highlights" will be made available.
Independent broadcasting is an interest area very close to my heart, due to the amount of time and energy I have invested at the freeform community and student radio station Subcity Radio over the past few years. It is at the Subcity studio I've chosen to broadcast this stage of the project from. I see similarities between the unpredictable nature of Human Radio and Subcity's content output.
Very few contributors at Subcity are aware of Human Radio. I believe this will give a truer output of the actual day to day human interaction with the broadcast chain than if I made it known to the whole station. The downside of this is that it leaves the project susceptible to accidental sabotage, uninteresting results and almost certainly some extremely distorted audio.
Documentation, research work and more is available at humanradio.tumblr.com.
I am firmly against commercial audio streaming services as a primary medium to consume audio.
