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BRUSSELS February 2017

February 1, 2017 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on BRUSSELS February 2017

Sarah was invited to give a seminar on radio at the école de recherche graphique (erg) for their seminar atelier called ‘after empire‘. Under the title ‘Double Hertz Radio’ she brought two FM transmitters with her and led a one day workshop that started with the question ‘What is radio?’ and ended with a series of hilarious performances by the students within the erg building which utilised the two low power radio transmitters and a dozen portable receivers.

The art school has a tradition of working with the medium of radio. This was represented in several other radio related workshops and the set-up of a temporary student station called Radio Ergote that collaborated with Radio Panik in Brussels to access FM airtime.

In the Radio Ergote studio. Photo by Marc Wathieu

BRUSSELS October 2008

October 4, 2008 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on BRUSSELS October 2008

Oscillatomium at the Atomium in Brussels as part of the White Nights festival

We hosted a night of radio art in the Ilya Prigogine sphere. Prigogine was awarded his 1977 Nobel prize for chemistry for his explanation of oscillation in chemical reactions

The phenomenon of oscillation was our theme for a night of radio broadcasting live from the Atomium in Brussels at the Nuit Blanche festival. Oscillatomium showcased electronic music from the memorable and influential Expo ’58 in Brussels and live performances by exponents of today’s experimental electronic music scene. Original works for radio were offered by an intriguing array of international radio artists

The belly of the beast

We set up a temporary radio studio and performance space. Our live broadcast in London, Lisbon, New York and Brussels featured commissioned radio works from Ian Helliwell, Wendy Van Wynsberghe, Johnny Head-in-Air, Élise Meriau and Ricardo Reis

Knut tests the PA, Dinah Bird performs

Our other guests: Jacques Foschia, Jean-Philippe Renoult, Élise Meriau, and martiensgohome. As the night wore on the wind blew stronger, and the Atomium rocked..!

BRUSSELS October 2007

October 29, 2007 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on BRUSSELS October 2007

We are asked to produce an epic live Radia event for the festival Radiophonic 2007. There were many other events taking place over the four days, a few of which are documented below

The setting of Les Brigittines was magnificent – the old and the new building are connected internally and bridged by a very old bell

Festival coordinator Irvic D’Olivier talks with Silvain Gire from ARTE Radio

The Bing Selfish Radio Show in full swing

‘La femme sans visage’ radio drama directed live by Clément Laloy

Phil Minton gave a magnificent solo performance

Our project was called Radioactive Radiophony, and it involved receiving live streams from Radia member stations around the world which we ‘contaminated’ in Brussels before sending the stream back to them for broadcast.
Here we see the Radia back-room crew, with Ricardo Reis playing Communication Chief

Our show lasted 4 hours. During this time each station would send us a 20 minute broadcast from their studio. Our team of contaminators was on hand to react to the incoming streams.
Above is Dinah Bird – our continuity storyteller, with Anna Friz and Jean-Philippe Renoult poised for real-time contamination

Our contamination toolkit, for guests to add some foley action to the proceedings

Contaminators Jacques Foschia and Ricardo Reis

We also had some live music as part of our radio event, here is the excellent La Brocante Sonore, who were partially contaminated by some sweet music from Marseilles. The combination of the two things in the church was awesome, giving a unique atmosphere

It seems it wasn’t enough to run the radio show – we also played as Tonic Train, contaminated by Roland Wouters of Martiens Go Home

One last thing to do before we leave Brussels. Jacques Foschia organized a concert for us, which turned into a collaboration with La Brocante Sonore. This is our score for the various combinations of musicians. Some joker added a section at the end – whatever happened to Harry and Jane?

La Brocante Sonore perform the middle fifteen. The member missing from the picture is active with amplified and acoustic shoeshine (see above photo for the shoeshine chair)

BRUSSELS April 2007

April 7, 2007 by Mobile Radio | Comments Off on BRUSSELS April 2007

We were invited to oknopublic 03 to present our Mobile Radio project, to play a concert and to take part in a workshop. Participants were drawn from various types of networking projects across Europe.

The roof of okno with view of the Atomium was the site of a presentation about the local open wireless network

Sarah’s instruments for our streamed Tonic Train performance

While in Brussels we caught up with Maarten and his new project called Rotor in their self-built office half way up a spare wall… Sarah worked with Maarten a few years ago at the Jonctions/Verbindingen 8 festival when he had an amazing scrap-for-art recycling project called Bricolage Sans Frontier. Success had meant that storage became a major issue so he has begun a different enterprise where he acts as a go-between for big business with useful waste (such as car parts) and small producers who can transform the unwanted material. The office windows are made from sticky tape…

Festival coordinator Annemie and archivist/webstreamer Arjen at the end of oknopublic03

We manage to catch a performance of Brocante Sonore before we leave, complete with shoe-shine