[ Deutsche Version ] Along the rail lines and the waterways of the city, the concrete hulks loom large and quiet; factories and silos that once clamoured with cacophonous machine activity, now laid to rest. These are hollow places: Vacant City Radio links these recordings with another kind of lost urban space - the cities on the dials of old shortwave radios. Many transistor radios, particularly from Europe, were designed with the names of cities in place of frequencies on the dial, but these radio cities often no longer exist. The frequencies have shifted as the radio landscape has also been renovated to make way for more privately-owned units. I am interested in these moments of transition between the monumental past and the generic present, particularly in the context of the relatively young cities of North America. Vacant City Radio considers ebbs in place and memory through ephemeral sonic and radiophonic representations of city, through low-watt transmissions of lost sounds manifesting in the dark corners of the dial. The studio piece consists of three movements in a sojourn across remembered and radiophonic urban spaces. |
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