Radio Art - Art Radio and Webradio

Art Radio and Webradio

An art radio is a radio station that would dedicate every second of its transmission time to radio art. Although this kind of project can seem utopian in the traditional state of radio, there are few lasting experiences in the underground or community side such as London's ResonanceFM which intend to make radio with art and promote the art of listening.

Also, radio had renewed itself through the Internet. The audio streaming technique had replaced the analogue transmitting system and artists can experiment on radio outside the legal constraints of an FM license for example. Among the webradios which are dedicated to radio art, some broadcast pieces like traditional radios. Some others directly experiment with the medium in the more concrete sense. Radio Astronomy broadcast sounds taken from outer space in real time. Le Poulpe is a networking experimental radio that mix several "spaces" processed and streamed through the Internet. Besides, podcasting can be considered as a new way of broadcasting, thus a new way of bringing radio art to listeners. Of the on-demand kind, SilenceRadio.org is a website which publish sound pieces which explore the different genres of radio art or intend to question the manners of making radio art today. The Ràdio Web MACBA Curatorial series also experiments with the radio art format.

"The origins of radio are deeply rooted in a very idealistic socialist potential to provide the communication necessary to connect people across space and time. At the beginning of the 20th century, radio was the equivalent to the Internet today in terms of its social as well as political possibilities. However, its development into a highly hierarchical system with expensive licensing fees and severe punishments for violations of these laws in order to protect certain industries has resulted in radio space being controlled by guardians of commerce. Radio licensing laws are concerned with the protection of copyrighted material. Radio has the potential to be a completely liberated, mobile and inhabited mass media."