a telematic radio network project

HORIZONTAL RADIO was a further development of earlier simultaneous telematic projects of the 90s. Especially important in this context are the projects Chipradio (92), Realtime (93), and State of Transitions (94). which were realised for TRANSIT and the ORF-KUNSTRADIO. These projects took a network of simultaneous live performances as a starting point and then used various means of communication (radio, television, telephone, data networks) in order to explore the communicative potential of mass media. Special emphasis was placed on strategies to reconcile the requirements of linear, one-way media, with he diametrically opposed requirements of open comnunication networks.

In addition HORIZONTAL RADIO explicitly referred to the period of the pioneers of telecommunication art. In Austria, this was roughly the time between 1979 and 1986. It was therefore no coincidence, that artists like Robert Adrian (Vienna), Hank Bull (Vancouver) or Art Pool (Budapest) participated in this project as they were closely related to some of the very early projects in Art & Telecommunication.

Therefore, HORIZONTAL RADIO not only reflected the technological development and changing characteristics of the media, but also the political changes, that have taken place since these early projects - among them telephone-music -projects between Western and Eastern Europe. In 1995 radio stations in Russia or Hungary contributed substantially and with all kind of technologies to a telecommunication project that incorporated much more than just the transmission of telephone music. In Sarajevo, though, in June 1995 the situation had regressed to the early telephone music stages.

(The 24-hour-schedule of HORIZONTAL RADIO was a conscious reference to a specific project, which was realised at the Ars Electronica in 1982: "The World in 24 Hours". This legendary project was initiated and developed by Robert Adrian X.)