Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022

IN WITH THE NEW
Radios, Pianos and Weather
The Piano Travels - a transmission
art installation by James Bailey -
is featured in NAISA’s 2022 Deep
Wireless Festival ( Feb 5 - Apr 4)
Deep Wireless at 20 WENDALYN BARTLEY
Radio art is a lesser-known creative medium yet is
perfectly designed for these concert-barren times we’re
in. Deep Wireless is a festival of radio and transmission
art, plus encompassing installations, performances, radio
programs, symposiums and a series of CD compilations.
The festival is entering into its 21st year of activities, thanks
to the committed vision of New Adventures in Sound Art
(NAISA) and its artistic director Darren Copeland,
When I proposed this story to my WholeNote editor, he recalled that he
had performed the role of a live radio host at a very early Deep Wireless
event in 2002 held at Theatre Passe Muraille. One of the memories of
that event that stood out for him, he said, was a performance of Radio
Music by John Cage, a work written in 1956 for one to eight performers.
His mention of that event in turn jogged my memory – I too had been
involved in it. Later when I chatted with Copeland about this year’s
festival, he was able to confirm that, not only was I involved, but that I
had actually conducted the Cage work. In fact, most of the performers
were students from my sonic arts class at OCAD who executed the
movements on the radio dials according to the notated score.
Now Deep Wireless is 20-years old and this year’s festival opens
on February 3 with sound installations by James Bailey and Shaughn
Martle that will run for the duration of the festival, ending on April 4.
The events will be presented online and in-person and are described
not as concerts, but as Listening Parties or Group Listening events,
often accompanied by a Q&A.
One event in particular caught my eye because of recent stories
I wrote in this magazine: on February 5 and 6, a new work titled
Winter Diary Revisited by Claude Schryer will be presented as a
Group Listening event; it will also appear as an episode in Schryer’s
ongoing conscient podcast series. The “revisiting” of the work’s title
is a return to recordings Schryer made in 1997 with Murray Schafer in
rural Manitoba that Schafer used
in his radio piece commissioned
by Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln
(WDR) in Cologne, Germany. For
the Deep Wireless event, Schryer
will remix sounds from this trip
along with some of Schafer’s
writings and new winter soundscapes
he has recorded in Ontario
and Quebec in 2022.
Radio art, also known as
Hörspiel and Ars Acustica, has
been a prominent art form in
Europe over the last number of
decades largely supported by the
NAISA's Darren Copland
larger state radio stations such
as WDR in Cologne, who commissioned many different composers
to create full one-hour pieces or radio dramas. Canadian equivalents
have mostly arisen from CBC programs such as Ideas and Outfront
and productions by the Radio Drama department. In fact, for several
years, Deep Wireless partnered with Outfront to create shorter tenminute
radio-art pieces, assigning four artists from across Canada to a
CBC producer who provided mentorship and guidance in the development
of the story ideas. Wonderful pieces were created during this
time, many of which can still be heard on NAISA’s SoundCloud page.
[soundcloud.com/naisa]. One that I recall often when riding the TTC,
featured the story behind recording the voice heard over the sound
system announcing the next stop.
Looking back, Copeland spoke about the creation of a Deep Wireless
Ensemble as being “a distinguishing feature” for the NAISA organization.
This initiative brought together disparate artists to create live
radio work. Copeland described it as being like a “four-way blind date”
combining artists from different disciplines and backgrounds, each
responsible for creating a piece with input from the others or alternatively,
all working together to create a larger collective work. These
interactions would often result in the start of a new direction for some
24 | February 2022 thewholenote.com