WTE103FM - WILDING THE EDGES 103FM (Audio, running time 6 min 18 secs, live broadcast)

 

 

WTE103FM was a live radio broadcast transmitted onto an FM frequency (103FM) for one day only.

 

The live event was in response to a number of sound workshops/discussions led by David Toop and culminated in the Wilding The Edges exhibition organised by Edwina Fitzpatrick at WCA. A number of FM radios were tuned into the broadcast and placed around the college.

 

Wilding the Edges, as a project, looked at the physical edgelands around the Wimbledon area. I translated these hinterlands into the FM broadcast band 87.5 to 108.0 megahertz (MHz) to explore the physicality of the spectrum itself and the line between uninhabited and populated.

 

WTE103FM also experimented with the ideas of heckling as a form of construction and what is perceived to be an intrusion. Two people having a conversation may see this action as the reality and the environment it is taking place in as a potential intrusion, but are they the intrusion?

 

WTE103FM investigated the responsibility of sound, the perceived ownership, and what it is that suddenly makes sound an intrusion. If a sound is functional for the individual is it therefore not considered an intrusion?

 

The show itself contained extracts from one of John Cage and Morton Feldman's radio happenings from the 60s, where they discussed repetition and the intruding elements of transistor radios. It also included an original sound work created by Lorraine Devine, which was a selection of field recordings applied to a popular song framework. The broadcast took the format of a commercial radio production.