Plug for the New Media Working Group

Hi everyone,

Ken, Kris, and I would like to thank you again for a meaningful semester. I also wanted to point any of you who are interested in continuing your investigation of new media informally to the Townsend Center New Media Working Group, which I help to organize. During the academic year, we meet twice monthly, and we encourage members to propose topics, select readings, and lead discussions around their research interests. If you're interested in seeing our schedule for the past year, please check out our blog:

http://ucbnewmedia.blogspot.com/

Readings are also available at http://nmwg.notlong.com/

You are all more than welcome to stop by a meeting next year to check it out. And bring a friend! The more interdisciplinary the conversation, the better!

Response to Neighborhood Public Radio

I found the lecture to be very interesting because it became a kind of multimedia discussion with live radio broadcast, online broadcast and the participation of a speaker through skype. It seemed the lecture was happening in different plains of reality at the same time which was very interesting for me. I also think NPR does a very good job of bringing their work to their audience. Their work is very inclusive and invites their audience to participate by becoming radio broadcasters themselves. They are clearly against the elitist one way delivery of a massive form communication and are very successful at delivering and sharing the medium or radio with their listeners. I also think it's interesting to see how there is some form of nostalgia of analog technology in their work which I think is totally valid in their pursuit of sharing a low cost form of communication with their audience.

response to NPR

I was quite impressed with NPR's use of radio technology. The talk illuminated some of the reasoning behind their choice to use radio rather than some other (newer) technology, but left me wondering if perhaps their motivation for using radio is more nostalgia-driven than they'd like to admit. When asked why they chose radio, one of the members of NPR responded by recounting a childhood memory of picking up a broadcast. Another member of the NPR team gave a more technical answer that led me to think about the limitless bounds of the internet and about the information that gets lost in a sea of websites. The limited dial of the radio serves NPR well. I would imagine that it wouldn't be too hard for someone scanning through the radio to stumble upon NPR and feel some sort of connection to the station. In fact, I noticed that the NPR team was somewhat fascinated with the discovery element of radio. They described the dissapointment of a group of youths who had found their station only to see NPR leave town a few days later. They also described several projects in which they sent people in search of their broadcast (Talking Homes). NPR seemed very much interested in giving their audience a sense of ownership through participation. Proximity and in-person interactions seem to be some important elements in the work, making radio technology ideal.

npr

sorry for delay, my computer crashed last week and had major issues with display and logic board still!...

-----

I thought the npr (neighborhood public radio) guys were personable, radical in their
thinking and were great speakers. i liked the skype element and thought
that they were the most comedic, ie very fun in their presentation.

as to ben's previous response to mine, which i just read; and our class last week,
which the issue of neighborhoods came up, i think that was the one thing i hoped would be included in the
project of public radio... ie whose neighborhoods? whose voices?

there is the issues of structural and systematic change that needs to happen in terms of access
and the relationship to the content that a particular media outlet would cover.

ie yes, it is political or public if hipsters want to talk about buying sunglasses in san francisco
mission district, but what about the neighboring communities that are affected by
gentrification in the mission district and never have their voices expressed or represented in radio...

ie simply being public or "radical" may not always translate to radical political transformative
possibilities... particularly for marginalized communities....

the other NPR (national public radio) I found does cover many issues around race, gender, and sexuality
while not central... so my questions is:

yes it is really interesting and radical to think of radio transmitters on the docks around the sf bay
but how can this also translate to radical content, ie representations, stories, and issues
that are not heard on the real NPR? that neighborhood public radio, may be the space to support this.

--m

NPR

Before start of the talk during the 5-10 minute delay, the sound experiments via Skype represented a good example of how the NPR artists engage in the audio experiments, and bring the medium of radio into an artistic expression. There is not a lot of art using the medium of radio; however their projects reflect that the opportunities are endless. Bertolt Brecht’s critique on radio was that the listeners do not have the ability to speak back to the radio. The NPR folks went beyond bringing the neighborhood’s voice into the radio and open up the interaction, and made the radio work as an “audio compass” as they did in their “Talking Homes Project” where the listeners hear the sounds of early morning as they walk around Lake Meritt. It is interesting that during this age of so many technological advances, the internet radios, youtube and justin.tv, the NPR can make the one way radio into a very promising tool of expression. Moreover, it is good to get to know their work as so much of the audio art revolves around just making music.
It was also interesting to meet the corporate driven side of the National Public radio and their critical view on Neighborhood Public Radio as well as politically driven Low power radio stations like Prometheus radio project.

NPR Response

I enjoyed that NPR once again brought up the idea of play in their art. They said that in some of their projects they just wanted to get people on the radio and see what sort of sounds they would make. I think it's been very interesting for me to hear so many artists approach their art playfully and that has changed alot of what I thought about art. NPR has done projects with either a political goal or the goal of getting a general impression of public opinion and other objectives/statements they wanted to make, but other times they just wanted to create something that was fun for them and fun for participants. I think things like the City Walk tours are a good example of one of their art pieces that did not have much of a goal other than to entertain.

It was also interesting how their work, like most of the new media pieces we have looked at this semester, are multi-faceted pieces. They are a blend of performative, installation, music, informative, and political all combined in radio broadcasts. Just thought it was cool how many different types of art they could express via radio transmissions.

NPR and subversion

The Desire of the Explicitly Illicit:
The deployment of analogue vs. digital radio as foundational to NPR was, I think, an important distinction. I don't at all buy the rational proffered by NPR that using broadcast radio is due to accessibility. It seems to me to be more related to the illicitness of running an illegal channel that drives their pirate radio project. Could one even call it pirate radio if the focus was running a shoucast digital server from your home network? Subversion is the central motivation, which I applaud. What is the psychological motivation for the explicitly illicit or violation of FCC rules?

Re-imaging Geography through Sound Broadcast:
I found the notion of the production of space via radio broadcast fascinating. The example of Lake Merritt, Oakland CA, with daisy-chain network of ptp broadcast devices was a good example of this. If we take grafitti as an anologue here we may see similar a phenomenon of reclaiming urban space through art. Could graffiti and pirate radio be visual and aural equivalents?

NPR response

It appealed to me that NPR took an activist approach to their work on public radio. When they spoke about civil disobedience, they said that they cannot promote it (meaning publicly) but will support it. In times when radio has been so narrowly confined to either talk or music radio - they chose to go outside the borders. One of their projects, where they are broadcasting from the NYC storefront window - when people are encouraged to stop in and speak their minds - is most inspiring. They preach what they practice - that everyone should not be afraid to speak out their believes or concerns - even if it is as minor as traffic on upper east side. In all it demonstrates that people can be heard when they so desire.

Taking the people's voice a step further - they had another project called "State of Mind". In it, was portrayed a psychological portrait around 2006 election - when democrats took the majority of congress. They posted signs urging people to call 1-888-361-4NPR - requesting the public to speak what's on their minds. The aggregate of those phone calls was the psychological outlook of that particular neighborhood. Back in 2006 - it was optimistic. I wonder how that changed now with economic decline. It would be interesting to see public's response now.

NPR response

I find it interesting that the last three lecturers in the series have confronted some sort of hurdle, logistical, technological, or otherwise, in their presentation. Marcia Tanner was late and without a powerpoint, the McCoys were down one and so was NPR. What was delightful for me about NPR's presentation was that the Skype supplement actually paralleled their work in terms of the threat of ephermality, the opportunity for manipulation of the audio component of the transmission, and the confrontation of hardware and real bodies with the transmission (through Skype and in radio waves). Their ease in "playing" with sounds before the presentation was not bogged down by the awe of presenters earlier in the series, but instead indicated a consideration for the audio results as an extension of the physical construction of the transmitter and other equipment.

NPR Responce

The NPR talk was the most satisfying lecture I've seen this semester. Not only did they both seem sincere in their interest concerning the possibilities that radio has to offer, but they also showed a healthy dissatisfaction with the limited forms the radio has been reduced to in recent times. They de-familiarized the radio as a device, and made it seem obvious, that it should be used for tactical practices, and transgressive behaviors in effort to communalize to the production of particular forms of radio for public listening.

Job well done.

Lee made a comment (ala Gregory Whitehead), about the radio being a device that secretes an aural environment, one that attacks not just the ears, but the entire body, in that, when listening to an amplification device such as a radio, the soundwaves inevitably diffuse into the entire surrounding area, not just funneling into our ears, but also covering our entire bodies. Though it seems natural to think sound just goes from the speaker into our tympanic canals, vibrating our cochelas, Lee suggested that there are affects of soundwaves that aren't heard, occuring in other parts of our bodies that may not be registered as sonic, but as something else, occuring within the experience of listening.
[i sit down and turn the radio on, and the from the vibrating membrane the speaker ultilizes to produce audible sound, patterns of atomic matter within the room inevitably changes in relation to my body. Sound has effected the enviroment of listening, in a physical way, and that ultimately is not restricted to the ears, but to the entire body, and may have very little to do with the ears to begin with].

NPR response

"We're artists first, activists second." The art isn't visual, it's aural. Yet it's not technically artistic (not music); it's politically artistic, which positions it always and already in the realm of activism. A polis emerges through the act of listening - whether individually or with others, broadcast is received as a mass media - listening is a political act whether or not the program's subject matter or station's mission statement overtly are. The the interaction of caller/listeners with djs on air is one expression of this. NPR's overtly political position criticizes corporate radio, and FCC regulations favoring institutions, for denying the political (polis) potential of broadcast transmission. NPR seems to bridge the digital divide by mirroring the democratic nature of the Internet, as if distributed radios could serve the same function as our distributed user computers.

Eisner Prize Screenings - Congratulations, Curtis!

Just thought I'd pass this information on, since our own Curtis Tamm is featured in this year's selections, as well as work by Berkeley Center for New Media DE student Claudia Salamanca.

Works from the Eisner Prize Competition

Friday, May 8, 2009 6:30 p.m.The Pacific Film Archive

Robert Rippberger and Navid Sinaki, along with a diverse sampling of videos from the competition. Rippberger will screen In the Middle, a beautifully shot, near-wordless story of a divorce told from the vantage point of a young girl. Sinaki presents Pop, an inventive hand-painted collage film that constructs a story about a young homosexual man using fragments of melodramas from pre-Islamic Revolution Iran. A program containing written descriptions by the artists will be available at the screening. Farley Gwazda's video installation Attention Relay will be presented in the theater preceding the screening; doors open at 6:10 p.m.

This year's judges were UC Berkeley faculty Mark Berger, Kwame Braun, Marilyn Fabe, Kathy Geritz, and Jeffrey Skoller.

* Attention Relay (Farley Gwazda, 15.5 mins). Death at Once (Claudia Salamanca, 10.5 mins). Sergeant Thorne (Molly Snyder-Fink, 10 mins). A Self Made House (Lydia Katherine Greer, 2009, 19 mins). Beautiful Sisters (Connie Chung, 8.5 mins). the texture of interpretation (as seen by the perceptual system of a civilization unknown). (Curtis Tamm, 5 mins). Hip Hop Underground (Gabriel W. Leigh, 8.5 mins). New Morning (Kate Maeder, Derek Dabkoski, 15 mins). Mama Don't Take My Kodachrome Away (Wenhua Shi, 2009, 3 mins, B&W/Color). In the Middle (Robert Rippberger, 9 mins). Pop (Navid Sinaki, 6.5 mins, B&W/Color)

* (Total running time: 95 mins, 2009 Color, Digital video, From the artists, unless otherwise indicated)

Response to NPR

I'm actually not sure I agree with Margaret's post. I think that what is explicitly political about the work that NPR is doing is the act of making public radio absolutely public. If some lady wants to get on the airwaves and gripe about the traffic, she can; if a bunch of kids get on the airwaves and want to broadcast their shout-outs, they can; if a group of pretentious hipsters want to get on the air and discuss their art or music, they can. In that sense, I think I find myself feeling that NPR's project is explicitly political and mobilizing, and it makes me more critical of National Public Radio and the manner in which it manifests its "publicness" as an asset (or fetish).

Now, if only marketing were easier....

Response to NPR

I enjoyed learning more about the potential of neighborhood public radio, but was ultimately disappointed by the political side of NPR's radio practice.

It seems that thus far they have succeeded in showing what the medium can do, and have occasionally allowed/inspired individuals to use micro radio as an empowering means of information. But there does not seem to have been sustained efforts to impact politics through either prolonged, regular, and critical discussions of political issues, or through the regular creation of more "NPRs" (i.e. no network of NPRs has been created).

I say this without having extensively listened to their archives or examining any existing NPRs that might be in place--in the Bay Area or elsewhere. But based on NPR's own presentation of their activities, they seem mostly focused on the artistic side of micro-radio production. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but if they or other artists desire to make a significant political impact (which NPR seems to want to do), I feel that they need to engage in a sustained critique of aspect X of society (i.e. regular broadcasts focused on a particular issue or a small set of issues), or work with organizations to create networks of NPRs. I recognize that such acts could result in legal problems for the artists/activists, but I fail to see how micro-broadcasting one time from here, one time from there, one time doing this, one time doing that, can bring about change when other forms of media are both easy to access and well-embedded in our culture.

I realize some might say that such work is not the responsibility of the artist, but in this case it seems NPR wants to be recognized as explicitly political. In this case, then, the artistic side of their work is not enough--to help to bring about the change they seek they need to do more explicitly political work with their productions.

NPR Questions

Since anyone is able to build a transmitter, radio is sometimes seen as an anonymous form of broadcasting. What are your thoughts on new developments of the radio industry - streaming internet radio and satellite radio? One of its obvious advantages is reaching a wider network of people - having a global impact. However, do you think it was a trade-off with loss of anonymity, and thus has really transformed into a different type of broadcasting?

Questions for NPR

What has been your response to the rise of internet radio and podcasts? I'm curious to know how you've adapted to the internet and how does pirate radio fit in to the internet. Do you think internet radio has progressed in the sense of being more open to feedback and participation from the audience? Or does it fail to have a wider and more horizontal spectrum of participation?

NPR

NPR is interactive in every means – it is out in the open, anyone can come in and speak, share your content using transmitters or put their own feed. This interaction and participation is already beyond corporate radios and the National Public Radio (for example the “State of Minds” project) – what further plans and projects do you have to enhance this neighborhood and listener participation and activism? Do you collaborate with other pirate radio stations, and if you do, what kind of synergy can this bring into your projects?

Questions for NPR

I think that the idea of underground radio is a pretty interesting one and wonder if the artists have ever thought of using it as more than just art. It seems like most of these broadcasts are done in homes in various neighborhoods (see Ben's post) or art galleries and I wonder how effective it has been at reaching a broader audience. Specifically, an audience whose voice might not be heard otherwise. We discussed in class that part of the appeal of radio broadcast is that it is hard to trace, and therefore a broadcaster can remain "invisible". Does NPR feel that their broadcasts might someday transition from art to being an actual, practical forum where people can be heard who might not be able to speak up via other forms of communication?

Also with underground radio and it's ability for the broadcaster to be invisible, I think that there are alot of interesting historical examples of the use of radio, especially in anti-Nazi resistance movements in Europe during WWII. Do you feel that you can draw any comparisons or inspiration for your work from the historical use of radio as a means to organize protest?

questions

Radio can be participatory in various ways, I am struck by bertolt brecht's critique on radio, as listeners do not have theability to speak directly back to the radio. What are the various ways, new media the internet has helped facilitate a more participatory engagement with radio?

Specificially, how does the size and power of a radio station, as NPR is currently the largest public radio station, complicate free speech? As a media outlet gets more institutionalized and or commercial, how might this influence the content? I am interested in how NPR may deal with this issue.

NPR plunging kit.

Could there be a visual counterpart to NPR? OR, is it necessary to penetrate the systems of radio transmission, as opposed to any of the other forms of socially oriented technologies?

Do you prefer the aural affect of the radio wave (as it is different from other forms of sound waves) // is the experience of this particular sound, a critical part of the intended "whole" of whatever project you embark upon?

Goodman's article become very intriguing once he mentioned the "Psychic engineer", that could help forward the practice of radio-transmission to change the form of radio reception. Our bodies become a giant membrane, the radio pulses non-discursive forms of communication at it.
body therapy.

Do you think we can listen without our ears?

--
Compared with a few of the abstracts that have been written up till this point (Bledner, McCoy, Delappe), NPR has already approached tonight's lecture with a more considerate form of communication. Their focus being eventually, pragmatic; they have asked a question, which allows the reader to focus their attention on what they've done, rather then reading a narrative of ideologies, interpretations of intent, memorized regurgitation, etc.

Questions for NPR

In his Radio Territories article, Steve Goodman states that most formulations of the mainstream v. underground radio relationship "tend to be overly unilateral, ignoring the symbiotic relationship that characterizes emergent media ecologies within the intrinsically viral culture of late capitalism." 

Aside from an obviously anti-corporate positioning, could you please describe your own symbiotic relationship to/location within both emergent media ecologies and the wider media spectrum of today? How do your broadcasts supplement/replace/affect the creation/consumptio of viral video clips, blogs, etc.? Finally, it seems that your programming is in someways an extension to radio of "Web 2.0" ideas--at least in terms of personalization and interactivity--could you describe if/how ideas and practices from the web influenced the creation and actual practice of your "NPR"s?

Questions: Neighborhood Public Radio

Given that hardly anyone listens to radio anymore, can the theory behind revolutionary radio be put into practice today? (I can imagine microradio transmitting to particular intended audiences, but if there's no wider reach, what does the message effect besides preaching to the choir.)

Podcasts seem to be the next best medium for revolutionary radio, but because everyone can develop a podcast (i.e. revolutionary radio is not competing with corporate radio) they do not seem very transgressive. NPR is interested in turning passive consumers of media into active producers and users, do Podcasts further these ends? (If so, why still distribute micro-trasmitters?) Moreover, with everyone producing podcasts, how do internet radio stations secure an audience (i.e. Babel effect)?

These together seem to indicate that revolutionary micro-radio, while sound in theory, is not an effective intervention in practice. (Is it then Art? And if so, what does that say about Art?)

Question for NPR

I'm one of those very rare people that was born and raised in San Francisco. That being said, my knowledge of the city, its neighborhoods, and its demographics--though far from perfect--is pretty okay. What I noticed about your projects is that they seem to center in largely decent (not affluent but certainly not poor) regions of the city, regions like Corona Heights, Portrero Hill, The Mission, the Western Addition, etc. Your locations in Oakland are equally skewed toward such regions as Temescal and North Oakland, Lake Merritt, and Montclair.

My question then becomes, what informs your decisions about the locations in which your various broadcasts and long-term projects will center? It seems to me that for a broadcast like "Talking Homes," it might be interesting to explore a San Francisco neighborhood like Bayview/Hunter's Point as a nice and necessary counterpoint to the stories coming out of areas like Noe Valley. If you have considered working in such traditionally "poor" (in the economic sense) neighborhoods, what has stymied the project or how did working there differ from working in largely affluent neighborhoods? I suppose the real question I'm asking is, how does social class affect the development and execution of your neighborhood projects?

questions for NPR

Sabine Breitsameter's article in Radioterritories suggests that radio, as a purely sonic medium, is able to "eliminate the bond" between an event and its origin, a framework conducive to the formation of sound networks, as opposed to the linear structure generally employed in broadcasting. Why is this model obstensibly inherent to radio so infrequently utilised? In particular, what legal regulations prevent the widespread establishment of neighborhood radio? How might artists working in other media exploit the inherent dispersability of radio in order to establish similar non-linear relationships between transmitter/artist and receiver/audience? What possibilities do technologies outside of radio offer?

Questions for NPR

Your abstract states that your plan was to provide access in excess and that you accomplished this, in part, because of transmitter-building workshops.

Does access to radio transmitters really impede the public's access to radio? Are store-bought radio transmitters really that expensive or hard to come by?

If price is not the issue, what is? Is there something special about building one's own transmitter? Is your aim to give your audience a sense of ownership or empowerment beyond what National Public Radio gives their audiences when they donate money(coffee mugs, hats and t-shirts)?