Lost in Transmission

“Radiophrenia is a collective experience of ephemeral encounters. There is no playback and no way to know who else is listening. Expectations of replay, rewind and fast-forward are replaced by the certainties of start and stop. Choose a radio programme from the schedule or opt to drop in by chance. Alight on a musical phrase, traffic, glacial thaw or birdsong, a swallow. This widely cast variety engenders different modes of listening. I could take notes and learn something, do some ecstatic dance, submit to the story of a strange land, or enter a trance, my inner eye replete with conjured images. My understanding of each ‘segment’ will not be static. Some things will turn me off and some on… The Radiophrenia project has an open-endedness unlike anything to be found in material work such as painting or immersive sculpture. Vision can deceive, walled off in its world of surfaces. Radiophrenia occurs as an open system, a crystal palace full of interstices. I position myself within and without. The terrain of hearing is equally illusory, given the appearance of confinement within the skull: it not only consumes inner space entirely, but makes it seem infinite.”