Photo Gallery of Numbers installation at the Sidney Cooper Gallery 2013
Numbers: (2013) 12 solar poweredradio installation, University Galleries, Illinois State University, USA (2013) and Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury, Kent. The Old Look Out Gallery, Broadstairs, Kent (2012)
Broadcast Addicted2 Radom Festival, Radio Corax Germany. The Dark Outside, Galloway Forest, Scotland.
Details:
The installation is in part homage to shortwave numbers stations, on air since the cold war and plays a series of coded messages from provocateurs of the future heard as numbers from six voices played simultaneously on different radios around the space. The work predicts numbers stations will move to FM and will remain there after licensed FM services are switched off, to be used by outlawed gangs, groups, agents and political movements. The work uses encrypted tweets collected from Occupy activists.
Part of a running theme, throughout my current work to discuss the future of FM via its past, in this case connecting with the long history of political activists embracing and experimenting with radio since its inception
E.g. from the Futurists La Radio, to ‘Free Radio’ across Europe, such as ‘Radio Alice’ (Italy), ‘Interference FM’ (1999 London, which I participated) to Occupy’s ‘Mayday Radio’ in 2012 (NYC)
“The collective bodies assembled in Liberty Square and elsewhere strike me as highly radiophonic in quality, and not just because of their innovations in human megaphone technology. The assemblies have a power that is dispersed and decentralized, with proclamations of uncertain, ambiguous authorship.” Gregory Whitehead (2012)
It is rather pleasing to read subsequently (11/9/12) that Gregory Whitehead and Lovink (7/1/13) share my interests in such movements
“The protests are hard to name, hard to locate, hard to map – and these are all strengths. Rather than distill the rather blurred and inchoate collective voice into a “program” the protests are actually concentrating on creating the sorts of processes internally that are have been throughly eviscerated in the official structures, and these internal processes and protocols will be a source of lasting strength, of the sort that dramatically changes lives. I would welcome the chance to help with the invention of Occupy Radio, and anywhere out of the world would be our motto.”
From Anywhere Out of This World a conversation in the vicinity of radio art with Gregory Whitehead and Manuel Cirauqui, Autumn, 2011
a precurser to Mayday Radio perhaps?
“We can squat soon – be- abandoned FM and AM Frequencies. We haven’t reached that point yet, and who knows if, and when and how digital radio broadcasting will really take over” (Geert Lovink, 2011)
The work considers such future use and how activists may be driven back to past and more covert means, as the internet becomes heavily policed.
My fictional prediction may come to be as Nina Power writes only this week “it seems increasingly important to organise actions against the cuts “offline” ( New Left Project, 2013).
Earlier versions
I am exhibiting details of a new work in progress Numbers at London College of Communications on March 1st 2012 it is one of eight fictive trace stations, the first was radio mind, which I am producing concerning possible future uses of the FM spectrum long after digital switch off in the UK.The installation is in part homage to shortwave numbers stations, on air since the cold war and will play a series of coded messages from provocateurs of the future. The work predicts numbers stations will move to FM and will remain there after licensed FM services are switched off, to be used by outlawed gangs, groups, agents and political movements. Visitors will be invited to write coded messages for future broadcast. The work in its present from has incripted tweets from Occupy activists. Numbers will be realised as a DIY surround sound micro broadcast and installation. The project will use micro tranmsitters as an effective portable installation system has been achieved a paired down version with 6 transmitters will be tested at LCC on the open evening and will be exhibited at the Old Lookout Gallery in the summer 2012.
Update
Numbers was realised as a surround sound micro broadcast and installation. The project uses 6 micro transmitters and 12 solar powered FM/Dab radios. It was exhibited at the Old Lookout Gallery July 2012. Numbers is one of eight fictive trace stations, concerning the future uses of the FM spectrum long after digital switch over in the UK, produced as part of my PhD in Radio Art.
Magz Hall 
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