"Chanson d'automne"

 

Shortly before the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944, Radio Londres broadcast the first stanza of Paul Verlaine's poem "Chanson d'automne" to let the resistance know that the invasion would begin within 24 hours.

• Les sanglots longs
• Des violons
• De l’automne
• Blessent mon cœur
• D’une langueur
• Monotone.

Blessent mon cœur d'une langueur monotone ("wound my heart with a monotonous languor") was the specific call to action.

Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User

Roman coin soup

Radio belly! Cat shovel!

 

Radiant brains! Apple deaf!

numbers stations...listening

The Conet Project

UVB-76

Temporary Internet Repeater

weeds, rubbish, broken glass

⟴ ⟖⟆➽ ❉▛ ▚░ᕓᏪ ᅕ

badische anilin und soda fabrik

BASF was founded in 1865 to produce coal tar dyes. Its first products were aniline dyes, whose success was enmeshed with that of the textile industry. In 1871 the red dye alizarin was synthesised. Other synthetic pigments followed… Production shifted away from colour stuffs to fertilisers in the early twentieth century, and in the 'stabilsation' years BASF merged with IG Farben as part of a rationalisation of the chemical industry. At this time production concentrated on synthetic rubber, fuels, operating agents and surface coatings, as well as advancing a sideline in recording technologies [notably magnetic tape for the Magnetophone recording device].

Synthetic Worlds / Esther Leslie / Reaktion / 2005

The interface between coal and steel is coal-tar. Imagine coal, down in the earth, dead black, no light… Growing older, blacker, deeper, in layers of perpetual night…
A thousand different molecules waited in the preterite dung. This is the sign of revealing. Of unfolding.This is one meaning of mauve, the first new colour on Earth, leaping to Earth's light from its grave miles and aeons below.

Pynchon / Gravity's Rainbow

NON SINE SOLE IRIS

…the rotten shimmer

Magnetic tape recording, which simulates the physical grooves of a phonograph record via continuous magnetically alterable particles, was first demonstrated by BASF/AEG in 1935 (Schoenherr), although this development did not reach the United States until the Allied forces captured Radio Luxembourg in 1944, discovering “a new Magnetophone of extraordinary capabilities” (Kittler, 1999:106).

McMichael 50XT

1. Important Electrical Safety Issues Related To Valve Equipment
2. have someone stand by power socket ready to switch off in case you get electrocuted
3. remember it only takes a few millamps in the wrong place to stop your heart or have nasty secondary accident.
4. your coil might make a better antenna than part of the tuning circuit - try connecting it to antenna socket instead this would be safer than poking around

long cat

“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." -- Albert Einstein

cecropia antenna

Ford Driver's Capacitor Recipe

it took a few attempts as the CD tends to shatter nastily. wear goggles if you do it. not sure what final technique was, but remember using soldering iron to melt some bits out
also scoring surface, then put in vice with wooden blocks and snap off sections. connecting to the surface is tricky as the aluminium film is v.fragile. i drilled a hole and used some star washers to pierce the coating and contact the metal film
+ solder tags and nuts and bolts.
the picture was the prototype, the practical one i fitted inside a CD multipack case as it has convenient central axle and dust cover. it went up to about 600 picoFarad. (250pF typical for commercial tuning cap. in mw tuner)

Electronic Voice Phenomena

Rorschach Audio and the Cemetery of Sound - Electronic Voice Phenomena and Sonic Archives

Joe Banks

irrespective of their original broadcast frequencies, a huge range of electronic transmissions share a tendency to demodulate onto (and become audible though) the amplifying circuits of radio receivers and tape recorders etc, producing what are often referred to by engineers as "stray" voices

Cocteau's film suggests that coded radio messages "inspired by the BBC broadcasts of the occupation" were transmitted from the metaphysical underworld - Orpheus asks Heurtebise "Where could they be coming from? No other station broadcasts them. I feel certain they are addressed to me personally".

observations, weather changes or other events of daily importance

skywave
Medium-wave and short-wave radio signals act differently during daytime and nighttime. During the day, AM signals travel by groundwave, diffracting around the curve of the earth over a distance up to a few hundred miles (or kilometers) from the signal transmitter. However, after sunset, changes in the ionosphere cause AM signals to travel by skywave, enabling AM radio stations to be heard much farther from their point of origin than is normal during the day.





















ionosphere
The ionosphere is a region of the upper atmosphere, where neutral air is ionized by solar photons and cosmic rays. When radio waves reach the ionosphere at a shallow angle, they are partly reflected by the surface. The ionosphere can also be similar to a prism refracting light; different frequencies are "bent" by different amounts.

Much as the surface of the ocean interacts with the wind, the condition of the ionosphere is constantly changing due to interaction with incoming radiation. When signals have "bounced" off this irregular surface, they may fade in and out and have the "phasing", "flanging" or "fluttery" character familiar to listeners of shortwave music broadcasts.

mortal coil

amplitude modification

outer diameter 740mm, strip width 10mm, strip spacing 2mm

the first station it picked up successfully was Spectrum Radio on 558AM [at the point the inner diameter is 500mm] way off my calculations! but spectral anyway.

with the contacts attached to fingers can find different stations by touch

spectral electrics

"I haven't worked out the inductance for the spiral yet, there are a few methods
it is an unusual calculation as nobody uses large diameter painted planar spirals much
may have to model it as an antenna or use finite element analysis."

• OUT OF PLACE
• SOUNDS OF SPACE
  

RADIO ON

RADIO ACTIVITY
We are the children of Fritz Lang and Werner von Braun.
We are the link between the ‘20s and the ‘80s.
All change in society
passes through a sympathetic collaboration
with tape recorders, synthesizers and telephones.
Our reality is an electronic reality

warning signs

• Weltempfänger

• 

radio