Archiv der Kategorie: Texts

Cross-currents: Gender and Transnational Broadcasting

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Report about transnational workshop at Bournemouth University, Centre for Media History, July 6 – 7, 2017

When I presented my PhD project “Radiophonics, Noise and Understanding” at the fist workshop of the Australian-German “Transnational Media Histories” collaboration[1] at the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University, in Sydney in February 2017, Dr Jeannine Baker asked me if I would like to join a workshop, which she and her colleague Dr Justine Lloyd were planning together with the British radio scholar Dr Kate Murphy for July in Bournemouth, UK. Its topic: Gender and transnational broadcasting. I asked her, if gender would refer exclusively to female aspects of broadcasting or if I also would be allowed to discuss the topic of my PhD about noise and radio art from a male and masculinity studies perspective. Jeannine liked the idea and so I got invited to participate in, and to present at, a very fruitful and inspiring international, two-day workshop at the Centre for Media History at Bournemouth University.

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Natural Radio

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Energizing Encounter with Douglas Kahn

What makes Australia and especially Sydney for radio art researchers like me such a desirable place to go to is the variety of sound and radio artists and scholars, who live and work there. There are numerous reasons for this cluster or gathering, as I found out during my research stay. However, one main reason certainly is Douglas Kahn, Professor for Media and Innovation at the University of New South Wales. Being responsible for such outstanding, seminal books like the essay collection Wireless Imagination. Sound, Radio and The Avant-Garde (1992), which he co-edited with the radio artist Gregory Whitehead and his two monographs Noise, Water, Meat. A History of Sound in the Arts (1999) and Earth Sound Earth Signal. Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (2013), Douglas Kahn attracts PhD candidates and researchers from all over the world, who are interested in radio and sound and their relation to the arts. 

 

When I eventually dared to contact Douglas Kahn and kindly asked him for an interview, he was very friendly and generous and invited me to visit him at his home in Katoomba, a cozy little town at the fringe of the overwhelming, scenic Blue Mountains Nation Park, about two hours by train west of Sydney. 

After I had read „Wireless Imagination“ and „Noise Water Meat“ with great benefit for my own research on the epistemology of radio art, I turned to „Earth Sound Earth Signal“, which left me behind quite a bit baffled at first. At the same time I developed the hunch that this book is about something really fascinating, mind-blowing. And as I like challenges, I kept coming back to it, over and over again. One sentence, which had struck me in particular, was „Radio was heard before it was invented and it was broadcast before it was heard.“ Therefore I asked Doug at the beginning of our interview, if he would be so kind to explain this phenomenon, which is called „natural radio“. You can listen to the interview dubbed in German here, and you can read it below in English. This is what Doug answered:  Weiterlesen →

A Recommendation: „Literature in the Digital Age“ Online Course starts March 13

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Did you ever have to dump books at an airport due to excess luggage after a long trip with many souvenirs? I just had. Awful expirience. Almost like dismissing friends. But despite having gone more and more digital after I participated as a student in last year’s first run of the terrific Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Literature in the Digital Age, I still brought three paperbacks with me on my 10-weeks-research trip to Australia.

I did it because I still and always will love the feeling of having „book-books“ around me. They look, feel and smell nice, they never run out of batterie and they are just a lovely companion on any kind of lonesome trip. And yet they can become quite bothersome or even an obstacle if you have to travel or move a lot, especially in globally connected, flexible and racy times like ours.

For situations like these an ebook reader is certainly a great alternative, although no substitute, if you ask me. But „literature in the digital age“ is so much more than only reading or writing a text on an electronical device. As the lead educator Philipp Schweighauser explains in this interview very nicely, the reading strategies of „social reading“ and „distant reading“ are just two of various examples how digital technology challenges literature and books nowadays.

In this MOOC  Philipp Schweighauser, Professor of American and General Literatures at the University of Basel (Switzerland), will take you on a six week journey through the world of literature in evolution. Together with my colleagues I will be one of the four mentors of this course and it would be my pleasure to attend you on this trip. You can join anytime but it is most fun to start in Week 1 with most of the other participants from all over the world. Just have a look!

Todtnauberg: Researching Paul Celan’s encounter with Martin Heidegger

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The philosophical radio magazine „Sein und Streit“ asked me to visit for them the hut of Martin Heidegger in Todtnauberg, a climatic spa approximately 60 minutes by car from Basel in the Black Forest. Of course I knew about this famous hut, which Heidegger acquired in the early 1920s and where he concentrated on developing his fundamental ontology.

Heidegger’s hut above Todtnauberg and the famous well with the star-die on top. (August 2016)

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A Revelation: Alan Macfarlane On Writing

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I have written all my life: articles, features, essays, diaries, letters, columns, seminar papers, speeches, lectures. I have experienced writing as burden and as bliss. Writing never stopped to fascinate me. Still I felt unsatisfied with my way of writing. Most of the time I have written for money as I used to work as a journalist since my teenage years. This is certainly not the worst reason. But I always had this other longing. I wanted to experience a different kind of wirting and yet not a  poetic, fictional one. I was looking and longing for way of writing about the world, about so-called „reality“ as well as about art I neither learned at school for journalism nor at university, especially not at German university. Eventually today a friend of mine drew my attention to this interview on writing with the British anthropologist Alan Macfarlane.

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Tribunal & Clouds: GLOBALE @ ZKM

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The  Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) Karlsruhe has opened again after several months of restoration. Within the next 300 days the festival GLOBALE will take place in the former ordnance factory: Many different exhibitions and symposia around the two main topics Infosphere and Exo-Evolution are in the making.

Real Cloud of Exo-Evolution by Transsolar - Foto: Harald Völkl, © ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie

Real Cloud of Exo-Evolution by Transsolar – Foto: Harald Völkl, © ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie

The guided tour through the two clouds – symbolizing Infosphere and Exo-Evolution – which Peter Weibel, manager of the ZKM and media artist, gave to me in advance for Deutschlandradio Kultur can be found here.

Peter Weibel, Vorstand und künstlerischer Leiter des ZKM © ZKM | Karlsruhe, 2014 Foto: Andy Ridder

Peter Weibel, manger and artistic director of  ZKM © ZKM | Karlsruhe, 2014 – Foto: Andy Ridder

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New Publication: „Noise, soundplay, extended radio“

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It is a great pleasure for me to announce that my first scientific article on radio art in English has appeared. After passing the double-blind peer review process of the ECREA Radio Research Section it just has been published in the book „Radio: The Resilient Medium. Papers from the third conference of the ECREA Radio Research Section„, edited by Madalena Oliveira, Grazyna Stachyra and Guy Starkey.

Resilient__RadioAfter I had the great opportunity and pleasure to present my PhD-project at the Radio Research Confernce in September 2013 in London it is of course also a very special pleasure to see the article printed now in English in a book, together with the articles of over 20 other radio researchers from all over the world.  My very special thanks goes to Guy Starkey, Grazyna Stachyra and Madalena Oliveira for the great job they did in editing this wonderful book. Although Mauro José Sá Rego Costa was allowed to translate the article into Portugese and publish it in advance in the online-journal of the State University of Rio de Janero the English version only can be accessed via the book due to the copyright of the publishers to protect their investment in preparing the book for print.

Nevertheless it´s certainly fine to tell the title of my article and to publish the abstract here:

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Aliens, UFOs & Earthlings

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Today the result of intensive research in the last weeks and months goes on air and online: My 28 minutes long radio feature „Von Aliens, UFOs und Erdlingen – Zur Kulturgeschichte der Außerirdischen“ will be broadcasted by the Swiss public radio station SRF 2 Kultur, afterwards being available as a podcast.

This production was only possible thanks to wonderful reasearchers like film scholar Simon Spiegel, astrophysicist Ben Moore, literature scholars Robert Stockhammer, Hania Siebenpfeiffer and Philipp Theisohn, ethnologist Alice Spinnler and numerous aliens. They are all featured in the show.

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A big thanks also goes to all the others who helped and inspired my work along the way and openend my eyes for so many incredible creatures in and aspects of this universe. These selenites of The Great Moon Hoax from 1835 (see pic the right) are only one example.

A very special thanks goes to Philipp Theisohn and his team at the Swiss national research project „Conditio extraterrestris. The Inhabitated Galaxy as the Space of Literary Imagination and Communication (1600 – 2000)“ at the German Department of the University of Zurich.

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Their amazing research projects probably bore me out the most that humankind is once again changing its sense of self and that we have to think and talk about it. Therefore I also portrayed Conditio extraterrestris additionally in a seperate article and broadcast.