Below are the quotes that I used in the 15 minutes-sketch of my dream of radio [2.0], yesterday at the Balie, at the Coolmediahottalk-show: http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/. I spoke about a few things more, but I guess/hope these ‘quotes’ conjure up my dream somehow.

Btw: it was a really nice event, not a large crowd, but a very good crowd, with an extensive knowledge of, well, alternative radio. Adam Hyde presented before me – talking about his idea of radio and his radio projects. Thanks to him and thanks to the issues and ideas raised by the public (a.o. Josephine Bosma, Federico Bonelli, Jaromil, Jo van der Spek, Eric Kluitenberg, Radio Patapoe and a radiomaker from Rotterdam) the night managed to give an overview of what makes ‘us’ dream about radio, do radio, why radio is still relevant, how radio is transforming and transforms (technically and culturally), why radio can be so exciting.

My talk was personal – but in the answering of questions and the discussion there was a chance to also adress political/cultural issues.

My quotes:

“Whyfor had they (…) donated him, (…) their tolvtubular high fidelity daildialler, as modern as tomorrow afternoon and in appearance up to the minute, (…) equipped with supershielded umbrella antennas for distance getting and connected by the magnetic links of a Bellini-Tosti coupling system with a vitaltone speaker, capable of capturing skybuddies, harbour craft emittences, key clickings, vaticum cleaners, due to woman formed mobile or man made static and bawling the whowle hamshack and wobble down in an eliminium sounds pound so as to serve him up a melegoturny marygoraumd, eclectrically filtered for allirish earths and ohmes.”

“This harmonic condenser enginium (the Mole) they caused to be worked from a magazine battery (called the Mimmim Bimbim patent number 1132, Thorpetersen and Synds, Jomsborg, Selverbergen) which was tuned up by twintriodic singulvalvulous pipelines (lackslipping along as if their liffing deepunded on it) with a howdrocephalous enlargement, a gain control of circumcentric megacycles, ranging from the antidulibnium onto the serostaatarean.”

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 1939, 309.11-310.21

John Cage, Imaginary Landscape #4, (for 12 radio’s, 24 performers & 1 conductor), 1951

“wat was dat alweer, een radio, een nieuw wonder van de wetenschappelijke god – en zij vertelden haar, dat het eigenlijk aethergolven waren, een kunstmatig oor dat de wereld kon beluisteren (en ge moest de kleine louis boone zien, hoe hij de knop omdraaide, en wachtte tot de stroom was doorgekomen … hier radio brussel, ici radio paris, norddeutscher rundfunk … en gelijk hij dat alles opschreef, voelde hij zich gewichtig, maar liet het zich niet blijken: hij was een snotneuske, hij dacht dat de wereld nu aan zijn gat hing”

Louis Paul Boon, Zomer te Ter-Muren, ed. 1966, p. 320

“By tuning a radio, you control the amount of wind in your house and, to a lesser degree, the language spoken there. You dial in the wind and regulate which rooms it will enter; how hard it will blow, and the form it will take: shouting, singing, silence, breath, whispering, aroma.”

“Different radio stations collect different kinds of wind, then break it up and slow it down until it sounds like a song or a man talking.”

Ben Marcus, “The Least You Need to Know About Radio”, in Parkett 61, 2001, p.162.

John Cage, Roaratorio, 1979 [____,____ ____ circus on ____]

“The mixture is not a specialized genre dished up for a small group of fans. It is an expedition to the innermost recesses of radio. The penchant for mixing represents the transition from alternative media, which still try to fill a lacuna in the existing supply, to sovereign media, which have detached themselves from the potential listening audience. They do not see themselves as part of bourgeois (anti-)openness or the smorgasbord of media choices, which at most they observe from outside. Things broadcast by others are merely potential ingredients. News is one archive among many. Sovereign media are fallout from the “emancipation of the media”, and abandon the communication model.”

Geert Lovink, “The Theory of Mixing”, Mediamatic, 6#4, summer 1992.