Radiophrenia 2025 Submission

Piece submitted to Radiophrenia 2025

Photo credit: shi blank/Alice Gilmour - remixed by The Argent Grub

Radiophrenia aims to promote the medium of radio as an art form and encourage experimental approaches to making radio that are not catered for by mainstream stations.

The next broadcasts will take place between 3rd – 16th March, 2025.

I’ve re-mixed and submitted a recording, Three Way Conversation, that I made recently for a local radio station (the Dream Machine Radio Show).

The original conversation was explaining what Bradford Sound Artists is all about with sound artists Alice Gilmour, shi Blank, and myself.

For Radiophrenia I wanted to experiment with the form, so Three Way Conversation takes a conventional radio interview, separates out the audio of each of the people involved and aligns them end to end, rather than combined as you would usually do for radio.

I’m playing with the idea that radio is a great medium for transmitting ideas (across great distances) and the way that is achieved. Interviews are a key method to do that, rather than say, just giving a lecture. It’s also partly a way to try to include the listener - it’s kind of a trick.

However, as a listener you are privy to that conversation but not part of it. You may talk back to the radio, shout at it even, but no-one in the radio will hear you. You’re not given space. (The phone in, or message us techniques radio uses give us the illusion that you can take part, but you’re just part of the game, not an equal.)

Breaking up the conversation raises a problem for radio. Silence. Dead air must be avoided at all costs!

I chose to fill the silence with a recording from the Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve, Australia that I recorded via the Locus Sonus Soundmap in 2021.

But for the listener this is an opportunity. You can fill the silence with whatever you like. Can you make any sense out of the conversation heard in this way? Do you have a chance to listen to people’s voices and not need to make sense of what they say? Maybe you can just enjoy the sounds you hear without needing meaning?

I hope to encourage people to take time, to stop, to give attention to listening, and enjoy the space and I guess that’s the idea I’m trying to transmit.