Radio plays in a networked age

Radio plays, features, radio art, reportages and literary readings are acoustic storytelling. Acoustic storytelling is the art of radio. With its production of acoustic narratives, radio generates cultural assets whose lasting value is expressed in the currency of attention. In a changing media landscape, linear broadcasting models become the enemy of attentive listening. The only place listeners can choose when to listen is online. The internet is not a supplementary medium to accompany radio programming. It is becoming the medium and the technical infrastructure through which radio is received. Media convergence has rendered the concept of broadcasting obsolete. In response to changing listening habits, acoustic narratives must be made available via the internet: on demand and forever. This requires a central online portal for acoustic storytelling. Radio becomes a platform for creating contexts where listeners can put together their own programme. Content producers must be properly remunerated. The networked radio play is a form of acoustic storytelling that has yet to be invented, but which might be a timely response to the changing media world. » more

On Trees and Sounds

First published in “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” July/August 2010

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” This koan-like question is often quoted in texts on sound and perception, and the answer given is often a counterintuitive no. » more

Listening Is Making Sense

Essay for the field notes #2 by the German label Gruenrekorder

Speech, music and noise all reach our ears in the form of sound. In spite of this, we have grown used to considering them as separate spheres. Overcoming this separation results in a kind of listening that integrates sensual and cognitive perception: listening to the city as though it was music, to music as though it was speech, and to speech as though it was some kind of noise. » more

My Life With Music

My Life With Music (#28), from: Die Zeit Online, 16 July 2006

I remember a long winter during my childhood. When it finally began to get warmer again, we children would play beside a nearby lake that was still frozen over and which seemed to glow in the setting sun. There were cracking noises and whiplash fractures, as intimidating for us as the thinness and fragility of the ice. » more

Self-Organisation in non-linear Systems

On the triptych of compositions dripping, windscapes and sono taxis

The triptych of sound-art compositions dripping, windscapes and sono taxis focuses on the acoustic phenomena of dripping water, wind sounds, and the songs of frogs and crickets. All three works are based on a new philosophy that has become established in the natural sciences over the past 30 years, causing the cliché-laden sounds of nature, whose potential seemed to have been exhausted, to appear in a new light. This essay aims to give an outline of this new thinking. » more

Silence in the Words of...

Silence a boundary notion, a conceptual ideal, an aural vanishing point. Saying something about silence equals loosing it. Being silent is impossible may it include to cease living. Many words have been uttered to grasp this paradox. » more