Gridpubliclock
(1993)
A performance for radio
Resonance FM, London, England. Summer 1998.
Danger
in Paradise on CKUT-FM, Montréal, Canada. April
1993.
Some excerpts from the Montréal performance appear
on the Hole
in the Head CD (but they are not identified as Gridpubliclock
on the CD). |
|
|
Gridpubliclock utilizes as instruments a radio station, an audience
and telephones. The host welcomes the audience from the studio and
then leaves the studio. The host calls from every public phone he
runs across and asks the audience to tell him where to go next. A
silent operator at the radio station fields the calls coming in
and puts them on the air without any screening. The fact that there
is no host (no central voice 'managing' the calls) created, in the
two instances the piece was performed, a human soundscape that turned
radio and performance inside out. Even with low levels of participation
(where just the performer participates for example) the empty space
between calls and the ambience of the city leaking through each
telephone booth creates a portrait of the city.
Gridpubliclock is a sounding of a city through its inhabitants,
mediated by an electrocuted radio-phone system.
|