04 > 26.02.2023 | Audioblast #11 – Network festival – Transmission of the Woods | Apo33 (Fr)

“Why build a radio station when you can just plant a forest and wire its trees?” in a small mobile home erected in thick woods on the edge of the District of Columbia, listening to signals received through an oak tree as an antenna. This realization that trees – all trees, of all kinds and all heights, growing anywhere – are part of a natural set of wireless and antenna towers. through the trees”. Indeed, later tests proved that with very sensitive amplifiers available today, it was not only possible to receive signals from all major European stations through a tree, but it turned out that a tree is as good as any artificial antenna, regardless of its size or extent, and even better in that it brings far less static interference to the operator’s ears.

In this perspective of combining nature and radio transmission, Apo33 proposes this year a new theme for the Audioblast festival which is related to the primary energy present in our environment. The inspiration caused by the idea of using trees as antennas for radio broadcasts and transmissions seems appropriate to us in relation to current questions about climate change and the safeguarding of our natural spaces. We wish to propose frameworks for radiophonic experimentation which think about the transmission of waves using forms of mutations and connectivities like the networks of mycelia present in the undergrowth and forests while using the aerial potential offered by trees. . More broadly, plants are also antennas and powerful transmitters and receivers of radio waves. In the same movement, listen to nature and transmit its language, its message through the airwaves.

What do these different languages tell us? How do the signals themselves become sources of radio transmissions? From field recordings to radio art, how do sound artists reclaim these concepts, this technology or simply its poietics?

With : bbob drake / fluxmonkey | Frédéric Mathevet | Luc Messinezis | Diane Barbé (tbc) | Herbert Baioco | Anne Marie Deacy | Strabisme Divergent | Aymeric Lepage | Hethre Contant | BaRiya (Riya Raagini and Pratyush Pushkar)