Wave Farm

Transcribed by Jerome Kazlauskas via otter.ai

Brett Barry  0:05  
You're listening to the Weather Warlock, a weather-controlled analog synthesizer and one of more than a dozen transmission art installations at Acra, New York's Wave Farm, a pioneer of the transmission arts genre for more than 25 years. We'll try to explain right after this. This episode of Kaatscast is brought to you by Ulster Savings Bank. An award-winning bank where community matters. Meet the friendly staff at their Phoenicia and Woodstock locations. Call 866-440-0391 or visit them at ulstersavings.com. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender; and by the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce. Providing services to businesses, community organizations, and local governments in the Central Catskills region. Follow the Central Catskills Chamber of Commerce on Facebook and sign up for a weekly email of local events at centralcatskills.org.

Weather Report  1:06  
Hello and welcome to the "Better Weather" for Monday, June 26th. We are 48.5% of the way through the year. There are 89 days left until the official start of fall.

Brett Barry  1:20  
WGXC-90.7 FM sits on a 29-acre campus called Wave Farm, a hub for terrestrial radio, transmission arts, and resident artists in Acra, New York.

Galen Joseph-Hunter  1:33  
So, my name is Galen Joseph-Hunter and I'm the Executive Director of Wave Farm, and we are in the hamlet of Acra, New York, which is inside the town of Cairo, New York spelled like Cairo, pronounced unfortunately like Cairo and we're in Greene County. When we learned that there was a really rare opportunity opening up at the FCC for nonprofits to apply for FM licenses, which happens like once every 15 years if you're lucky. We thought like ... here's an opportunity to really get interesting content, radio art content, artists who are working with the transmission spectrum, give them a radio station they can have access to, which is unheard of in the US. But we're not just going to do that. We believe the radio spectrum is like public parkland and need to be accessed by the public; and so, WGXC has always had a mission that is both about creativity on their waves and community content; and we really, really try to leverage it as a platform for underserved, underheard voices.

Mayuko Fujino  2:32  
You're listening to WGXC Acra 90.7 FM. This program is "Beakuency" and my name is Mayuko broadcasting from a beautiful waveform.

Galen Joseph-Hunter  2:45  
We've been up in Greene County in the hamlet of Acra and Cairo, New York since late 2004. We were originally founded in Brooklyn in 1997, as a microradio artist collective; microradio being a term that was preferred over pirate or unlicensed broadcasting at the time ... it was part of a country-wide activism moment that was advocating for the FCC and for Congress to make possible low-power FM licensing, and eventually it was successful.

Tom Roe, who is our artistic director and one of the original three founders of what was free103point9, along with Greg Anderson and Violet Hopkins. So, Tom and I met in 2000 and that's when I became involved in the organization. He and I are married; and we had separately ... I think had a dream of an artist residency program; and because we were working with artists using the electromagnetic spectrum and radio spectrums, we realized that by coming upstate, we could both offer physical space as well as space on the spectrum. So, you know, if you're playing with low-power micro transmitters, the radio spectrum in New York City is much more congested than it is in Cairo, New York, for example. We saw artists who were coming from experimental music and free jazz and noise ... start to really conceptually integrate the act of transmission in their work and we realized that there was this genre that we call transmission art ... emerging or developing or growing and we wanted to be able to foster that.

Brett Barry  4:34  
In the WGXC studio, broadcasters have access to traditional radio gear, mics, audio mixers, etc., but they can also dial in that Weather Warlock machine for synthesized sound that reflects current changes in sunlight, wind, precipitation and temperature or they can fire up the traffic sacks, which transforms the white noise of passing traffic on New York Route 23 into an audio signal that DJs can mutate and manipulate into the broadcast. Outside of the studio, Wave Farm's 29-acre Art Park is home to an array of media art installations. Galen showed us around.

Galen Joseph-Hunter  5:18  
We are standing directly in front of Zach Poff's Pond Station. It was installed in 2015 and it is a solar powered hydrophone. It's a stereo hydrophone, which is an underwater microphone. We talk about the works here at Wave Farm as being standalone works of art, as well as instrumentation for visiting artists. I'm gonna play "Pond Station" for you via the Wave Farm radio app. People can also access all these streams at wavefarm.org/listen. So, you're hearing live (what's happening in the pond we're standing 50 feet in front of).

Brett Barry  6:02  
Pond Station is a solar powered transmission pod on the surface of Wave Farm pond. As the installation description reads, as the sun warms the water each day, hydrophones (underwater microphones) reveal a slow crescendo of sound. Aquatic insects sing to mark their territory, while gas bubbles rise from the pond bottom, punctuated by unidentifiable grunts and squeaks. This polyrhythmic chorus mixes with traces of birdsong and passing cars that filter down from above. Rain on the pond surface creates a dense cloud of high frequency detail like the coals and a cooling campfire. Installations like these are often conceived during one of Wave Farm's artist residencies.

Galen Joseph-Hunter  6:50  
Well, the residency program is specific to transmission art. So, we do have people apply with sound art projects that aren't eligible and it's we're constantly trying to figure out better ways to communicate what we mean by transmission art. I mean ... we've been doing that for 25 years, but what we really mean is people who are both formally and conceptually using the electromagnetic spectrum. So, it's not just about amplified sound, it's really about thinking about transmission technology and the act of transmitting and what being a transmitter is versus a receiver and what that relationship is. We have an annual application deadline of February 1st and residencies take place between June and October. Once you're in residence with us, you have an open invitation to return whenever there's room at the inn as it were; and so, we do have people here (November through May) and in between, we have people here constantly. Our artists fees range between $500 and $700, which we pay the artists when they're in resident, it's a stipend. So, we're going left here and the next project we're encountering is hidden in the back of the brush there and it's called Test Site of Acoustic Commons 1 because this is the first one of a series by the collective soundcamp because this is the first one of a series by the selective soundcamp. So, you're hearing my voice being streamed live with about six seconds of latency. Turn off my echo here as I explained the project. So, this is literally a microphone that is 24/7 open and accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. The concept behind the project is this idea of taking environmental sounds in whatever shape they may come and really bringing them into a public commons and making them fully accessible. So, when it's not a drought, we've got a little waterfall will pass in a second. There's the bird sounds, there's Rte. 23, there's people being given a tour.

Brett Barry  8:56  
Editing this podcast in my own studio, I tuned into Test Site of Acoustic Commons 1 and this is what I heard. Live from Wave Farm, Rte. 23 traffic, rain, song sparrows, ovenbirds. Anyone can tune into the Wave Farm Art Park either through their site or mobile app for live transmissions of natural human and other worldly soundscapes like the Here GOES Radiotelescope installed in 2020.

Galen Joseph-Hunter  9:32  
We are now standing next to Here GOES Radiotelescope, which is a DIY listening station to the GOES-16 geostationary satellite (that's 22,000 miles in space that way). The projects by Heidi Neilson and Harry Dove-Robinson and it is listening to radio signals, receiving them, recombining them via hardware inside the structure, and then displaying them inside the structure and there are high resolution images that are weather patterns. There's also a viewing station in the library, which does not require you to climb into the structure. So, in addition to the images, which they make available to anyone who wants to use them creative commons in really hi-resolution files. There is also a generative sound work that is 24/7 that is certifying the data from the satellite; and Harry and Heidi talk about this being what they imagined the satellite is hearing in space. So, you can see there's like a black aspect of the dish, which is a commercially produced satellite dish, and then the artists weren't able to lock the signal from the satellite and they realized their diameter was too small; and so, the silver perimeter is actually guinea pig cage wire from Lowe's that was bit of a quick test with ... realize that did the trick and then permanently installed it. I think this is one of 10 citizen built listening stations that we know about in the world; basically what these two artists have done with a budget of like $1,500 is what AccuWeather and NASA have done with a much different budget.

Brett Barry  11:20  
More from Wave Farm in a moment. But first, congratulations to the winners of our "Uncharted" audiobook giveaway (Melissa Everett, Laura Avello, Helen K. Chase, Carol Miserlian and Diane Galusha). Check your inbox for the download code, "Uncharted: A Couple's Epic Empty-Nest Adventure Sailing from One Life to Another" is available wherever you get your audiobooks like Libro.fm, where a portion of every audiobook sale goes back to a local bookseller like Briars & Brambles Books. The go to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path. Open daily. For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call 518-750-8599. Kaatscast is also supported by Hanford Mills Museum. Explore the power of the past as he watched the waterwheel bring a working sawmill to life. Bring a picnic to enjoy by the millpond. For more information about scheduling a tour or about their new exploration days, visit hanfordmills.org or call 607-278-5744. Back at Wave Farm in Greene County's Acra, New York, Executive Director Galen Joseph Hunter let us into the woods toward a set of cowl vents you might see on the deck of a ship with sound emanating from their bell-shaped openings.

Galen Joseph-Hunter  12:56  
So, we're standing with underground codes by Yvette Janine Jackson. There are two cowl structures that were donated to a firm by the artist (Charles Lindsay). They are modeled after air intake valves from steamers. They very much are reminiscent of shapes that you attach to ideas of ships. Because of that, when Charlie offered them to us and because of their shape, I immediately thought. Well, they'd be great to amplify soundworks in. Yvette Janine Jackson has a piece from 2017 called "Destination Freedom," which is a radio opera that is about Africans being transported to the Americas; and so, the shape of the cowl made me think about her piece and how wonderful it could be installed. So, we're standing closest to the first cowl, which is playing "Destination Freedom." We then were able to commission of it to do a second component of the project (thankfully) through a Warhol Foundation grant; and she composed a second piece which she calls "Underground (Codes)." She also calls the entire installation, "Underground (Codes)." The second piece she talks about as being on a vertical axis and from beneath Mother Earth up into the stars and she composed it as a letter or a response to "Destination Freedom." She also was very intentional about the site and the location of the piece and has talked about it; working in conjunction with it ... natural environments sounds including those of visitors approaching it. The two pieces are different durations: "Destination Freedom" is 22 minutes and "Underground (Codes)" is 15. So, they loop and they're in constantly different dialogues with each other, which was also intentional. You know, standing here with the piece, you can feel the low frequencies underneath you, so it's a visceral experience to and that we often have people ask us if speakers are buried in the ground or if there's subwoofers and it isn't. It's actually just a condition as a result of the ship (the cowl structures). They're amplified within and the compositions themselves.

So, this is a project called "Remote Audio Outpost" (it's by Japanther). They installed it in 2012. Japanther was a punk rock duo-art project (Ian Vanek and Matt Reilly). Ian Vanek was the vocalist and always sang into a telephone receiver. So, for the first 10 years of this project (when you open the door), there was a telephone that you would pick up the receiver and you would be being recorded; and so, we would talk about it as a private confessional for public broadcast because the recordings would then go to the artists to make radio and sound works. Now, there is a phone booth at the entrance of the study center and that is the audio guestbook private confessional. When you pick that phone up, you're being recorded and here is a listening station now for all of the confessions that have been collected (both at the site and the phone booth).

Confession:

I mean ... it's like the important stuff I don't open (stuff from the bank, tax people). I just don't want to deal with it, so I don't open it. Last time I moved, I had a banker's box full of unopened mail from insurance companies, banks, the tax people ...

Brett Barry  16:41  
Confessions recorded into the handset of a rotary payphone through to visitors inside a tiny rustic A-frame in a corner of the forest.

Galen Joseph-Hunter  16:51  
... to this I'm in now because I didn't do my taxes for four years.

Brett Barry  16:55  
On our walk back to the study center building, Galen spoke about the unique offerings of terrestrial that is land-based community radio.

Galen Joseph-Hunter  17:05  
As an organization that has this like a deep passion and commitment to terrestrial radio, I often find myself as like a cheerleader and advocate about what is unique. You know, our radio station has an incredibly diverse listenership. Much of that is because of the terrestrial nature of what we do and that people still have car radios and hit scan and encounter us accidentally and then either fall in love or are baffled or like annoyed and all of those reactions. We want all of them. We also have a listenership inside prison facilities in the area and get letters frequently, just communicating how important that radio station is to those folks. It's also I think ... interesting to think of people with terrestrial radio, encountering works that are midway and through and what challenges that presents or what opportunities that presents to artists and also just like the conceptual act of transmitting through the airwaves and thinking that through.

Brett Barry  18:08  
Back in the main building, the art piece entitled, "Every Radio Station" by Jeff Thompson; encapsulates both terrestrial radio and transmission art through a series of 95 speakers; each housing its own handmade radio tuned to one frequency on the FM band. Walking from one side to the other, reveals a fleeting glimpse of the radio spectrum. A snapshot in broadcast time that's unique to every visit.

Galen Joseph-Hunter  18:39  
So, this piece has also been installed in Boston and New York City and I love how site specific it is, right? It's a totally different work in any different location; and of course, it's time based. So, if something really major was happening in the world, it'd be quite different than on the day. Something isn't.

Brett Barry  19:02  
Seeing and hearing is believing. So, if you're interested in art, radio experimentation, or just a unique Catskills experience, check out Wave Farm for yourself. Tours are available June through October; Saturdays from noon to six and other days by appointment. You can get a preview and stream live transmissions at wavefarm.org Thanks to Rick Rollins who assisted us on this production and to the Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for local regions like the Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call 518-763-6854 or email: mountaineaglenews@gmail.com. Kaatscast is produced by Silver Hollow Audio. Please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or whatever app you use, so more people can find out about us. And you can access all our shows, sign up for our newsletter, and even make a donation at kaatscast.com. I'm Brett Barry. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.