Anna Friz – Sound Arts Lecture Series
Anna Friz is a sound, transmission and media artist, and media studies scholar. Her work reflects upon media ecologies, infrastructure and environment, time perception, radio and transmission art histories, and critical fictions, with a focus on listening, improvisation, site-specificity, and repurposing technologies. Since 1998 she has created self-reflexive radio for broadcast, installation or performance, where radio is the source, subject, and medium of the work. She also creates large-scale audiovisual installations and composes for film, theater, and contemporary dance.
Her most recent works include the outdoor transmission sculpture Solar Radio (with Absolute Value of Noise) at Wave Farm, NY; the 22-hour live radio performance Fog Refrain, and We Build Ruins, a series of media art works expressively considering mining and industrial corridors in the high altitude deserts in northern Chile. Anna is currently Associate Professor of Sound in the Film and Digital Media Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
I really enjoyed Anna’s presentation. I find radio noise to have very aesthetically appealing properties. I sometimes like listening to scanner radios on (http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901). It feels like exploring some hidden realm. The audio equivalent to public cctv cameras (https://www.tfljamcams.net), but instead of exclusively evoking the surveillance state, it shows how the technology in the hands of the many.
This is something Annas work touches on, the space of radio in relation to those who use it as a tool.
One day I would like to buy an old WW2 radio, the ones in the big metal boxes with the big dials just to see if I could make any sound with it. The experience of soldering and electronics that we’ve learnt would help with this.
I noted last year some music I like that is influenced by radio:
Tim Hecker – Radio Amor
William Basinski – Shortwavemusic
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven
Lawrence English
Grouper