Soundwalkers

Soundwalkers from Raquel Castro on Vimeo.
This film by Raquel Castro includes interviews with free103point9 transmission artists Michelle Nagai and Tom Roe, as well as Executive Director Galen Joseph-Hunter, and many other terrific sound artists. The description:

There are some fundamental principles regarding the construction of an acoustically healthy society, one where we can exist within the sounds of life. Respect towards voice and words, sonic awareness, the awakening of the sense of hearing. To preserve the sounds that tend to fade out, while remaining open to the sounds that spring out of each technological stride. To build an aural idiom that interprets its own symbolism. To accept the silence, enforcing it in the due moments. And, above all else, to listen.

Podcast Interview with Tom Roe of free103point9

From Future of Music Coalition:

Back in October 2007, the FCC opened a brief licensing window for full-power, non-commercial stations. FMC and our friends at Radio for People thought this would be the perfect (and rare) opportunity for community arts organizations to get on the dial. We worked to identify qualifying groups, letting them know about the possibility and assisting interested parties with the application process.

Now, the approvals are starting to trickle in. New York State "transmission arts" collective free103point9 was recently awarded an FCC license to launch a 3,300-watt FM radio station on 90.7-FM in Greene and Columbia Counties.

Freelance journalist and radio enthusiast Mike Janssen (who worked on and has written about the full power licensing process) recently interviewed free103point9's Tom Roe about how they plan to build a community-oriented radio station from the ground up.

Listen to the podcast here (right -click or option-click to download).

free103point9 to return to the airwaves

From Mediageek:

free103point9 is a transmission arts organization that started as a micropower radio station, moved online, and broadened its horizons to become a sponsor and creator of sonic art. Now the group is poised to return to the broadcast airwaves after receiving a full-power non-commercial FM broadcast license from the FCC. free103point9 program director Tom Roe joins to talk about the station and transmission arts. Listen to this episode of the Mediageek radio show here:
http://radio.mediageek.net/?p=358

Panel on the present and future of the arts in the Hudson Valley

This panel, Sun. Sept. 14 at the Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon, NY, brings together Benjamin Krevolin, board president of the Dutchess County Council on the Arts, Norm Magnusson, known for his allegoric paintings, his faux historic roadside signs, and his Funism.com website, Tom Roe, founder of Wave Farm in Greene County and a leading proponent of the new Transmission Arts movement, currently on view at the SUNY Purchase's Neuberger Museum. Also on the panel are Sparrow, author/poet/critic, Robert The, Kingston-based conceptual and book artist with a background in philosophy, Christina Varga, Woodstock gallery owner and Brian Wallace, curator at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY-New Paltz. The panel, organized by critic and author Paul Smart, will be streamed live on free103point9 Transmission Art Radio via a link at www.free103point9.org, or tune in by pasting http://comm.free103point9.org:8000/vanbrunt.mp3.m3u into your media player.

Part of "Hudson Valley Invitation exhibition, a broad range of media and styles are represented reflective of the multiplicity of points of view held by artists in the Valley. Our region is close to one of the preeminent art capitals of the world and the artists here, many of whom show their work in New York City, are well aware of the currents of contemporary art. Some chose to go with the flow, others chose to follow their own compass. All of which makes for a fertile and fascinating panorama, well worth knowing better.

Participating artists include: Chris Albert, John Allen, Emil Alzamora, Gabe Brown, Robert Brush, Richard Butler, Richard Deon, Laura Moriarty, Alison Moritsugo, James Murray, Franc Palaia, Jaanika Peerna, Fawn Potash, Lyndon Preston, Eliza Pritzker, Molly Rausch, Angelika Rinnhofer, Robert Rodriguez, Jr., Christie Scheele, Charlotte Schulz, Michael Sibilia, Ed Smith, James Westwater, Eleanor White, Tony Moore, Simon Draper, Rieko Fujinami, Lowell Handler, Matt Harle, Thomas Huber, Peter Iannarelli, Gary Jacketti, Steven Jennis, Grace Knowlton, D.Dominick Lombardi, Susan Magnus, and Norm Magnusson.

Where are we? A simple enough question, but one not easily answered when it comes to mapping the current art scene. Especially in a region that’s part of a larger art world whose topology is in flux. The Hudson Valley Invitational at Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon this month is an attempt to indicate some of the more important artistic markers around here. With one work each from over 30 artists, the exhibition doesn’t claim to be an exhaustive survey. Many more eminently worthy artists could have been added had the gallery’s space allowed. Nevertheless, by presenting a healthy sampling of compelling works by talented artists, the Hudson Valley Invitational serves as an interesting point of departure for further exploration of our local art environment. The idea for the Hudson Valley Invitational came out of the suspended plans for a regional art fair devised by Robert Curcio of Curcio Projects and Carl Van Brunt, owner and director of the Van Brunt Gallery. Assisting in the current show are Jennifer Mackiewicz, co-curator, Bart Bridger Woodstrup, who has compiled a selection of local video artists’ work and Paul Smart, critic and author, who has put together a panel on the Present and Future of the Arts in the Hudson Valley.
http://www.agreatertown.com/beacon_ny/hudson_valley_invitational_at_van_brunt_gallery_00076952

Sept. 14, 2008: 3 p.m.
Van Brunt Gallery, 460 Main St., Beacon, NY
845-838-2995

Radio 4x4 at Noise! Festival plus Bunnybrains

This is an excerpt of the Radio 4x4 performance by Tom Roe, Giancarlo Bracchi, Michael Garafalo, and Slink Moss Friday, May 9, opening the Noise! festival that night at Ontological Theater in Manhattan. Radio 4x4 is a free103point9 project with four performers each performing into an FM transmitter, rather than a PA or amplifier. Instead, radios are spread around the space, tuned in randomly to the four "stations" with performances. This is from a YouTube video from Slink Moss.


And this is from Bunnybrains performance that same night at Noise!

BYOTV

From The Video Gentlemen:

"Late March 2008, The Video Gentlemen’s BYOTV network launches a six-week season of special reports engaged with technocultural turnover from analog airwaves. Transmitted from within the New American Art Union, a variety of interdisciplinary artworks, live presentations, and workshops form inquisitive constellations around topics including e-waste, surveillance, haunted media and media archeology. Low-wattage transmissions emanate from an array of re-configured electronic detritus distributed around the gallery. Telecommunications, and the distance implicit in its operation is countered by a physical proximity prescribed by the limited range of the BYOTV transmissions. Visitors are encouraged to “bring their own TV,” or borrow one from the gallery, intercepting transmissions from their immediate airspace. Closely scrutinizing the premise of obsolescence, BYOTV tunes into an alternative agenda, encouraging new modes of cultural production, collaboration and exchange."

free103point9 is pleased to contribute a program of works for the Video Gentlemen’s BYOTV exhibition at the New American Art Union in Portland, Oregon.

Artists contributing work to the free103point9 curated program include 31 Down, The Dust Dive, Tianna Kennedy + Chad Laird, LoVid, Todd Merrell, ben owen + Sarah Margaret Halpern, ben owen + Justin Lincoln, and Tom Roe. You can watch and listen to the works from these free103point9 transmission artists here. Tianna Kennedy and Chad Laird's "18 19 20" via YouTube is below.

Show is March 19, 2008 – April 27, 2008 at New American Art Union, 922 SE Ankeny St., Portland, OR.