Site-Specific Public Performance / Audio / Radio / Workshop Platform

2008

part of DARE-DARE's 2008 program
Cabot Square
Montreal, QC

web archive of blog: http://www.radio.dare-dare.org/

We live in a world full of devices which enable people to communicate with one another. Consequently, we also live in a world full of the electromagnetic waves emitted from these devices. Their signals travel throughout the atmosphere seeking communication with other compatible devices. The signals are silent and invisible to us unless we are equipped with the correct coupling device that can receive and interpret them. Using other parts of the spectrum allows us to ’see’ inside the body, or far into deep space. Even other frequencies of the spectrum allow us to speak and see each other from long distances without the assistance of wires.

As humans, we are outfitted with a set of narrow-band receivers ‘built-in’. For instance, our eyes are attuned to sense a particular set of frequencies of the spectrum (visible light), and our ears another. When we add devices, we enhance our the ability to receive and understand many more signals than our bodies can natively. Our cell phones, WiFi enabled computers, televisions, and radios all receive signals from different subsets of frequencies along the same electromagnetic spectrum. In a sense then, all of these devices can be seen as an augmentation of the body, a prosthetic allowing us to see and hear parts of the spectrum to which our eyes and ears are normally blind and deaf, respectively.

Today, our atmosphere is filled with signals from all of these devices communicating with one another. These devices use a particular portion of the spectrum called the radio spectrum with frequencies between 3Hz to 300GHz.

Radio frequency (RF) signals propagate throughout the atmosphere, reflecting and refracting at the speed of light, in all directions at once until they are absorbed or enter into space, leaving the earth behind. Even then, they may bounce off an object and return back to the earth’s atmosphere (ask any radio amateur about ‘moon bounce’ communications). These signals weave together and create an incessant, invisible mesh of man-made radiation around the world.

Today’s spectrum is predominately utilized by military and governmental organizations, with government regulating bodies doling out expensive licenses to corporations for the right to broadcast en mass to the public. These powerful broadcast, or one-way, licenses have come to be understood as ‘radio’ versus the utopian conceptions of radio as (at the very least) a many-to-many communications medium. Except for a small fraction of frequencies allocated to amateur operators, who need to pass an exam to receive the right to use the spectrum, there is no other way for the public to gain any access to this resource, arguably one of Earth’s most important, and only, inexhaustible resources.

Our situation today is far from Marconi’s vision of radio’s ability to save lives and enlighten humanity, or Klebnikov’s ‘Radio of the Future‘. Instead, today’s radio spectrum is a tightly controlled, profitized commodity. In this light, DAREDX seeks to re-establish the public’s presence and right of occupation within the radio spectrum. While there exists an active and progressive amateur radio community worldwide, it is typically out of sight (and earshot) from the general public. DAREDX will expose and access the radio spectrum by aurally re-broadcasting nightly explorations throughout the radio spectrum, while attempting to connect with as many locations around the globe in an effort to highlight the community of radio. It will activate the evening air of Cabot Square in order to re-establish the connection of the spectrum to public space. DAREDX will allow the public in the square to hear the signals in which we are constantly enveloped.

Re-invigorating the words of an infamous amateur operator in the early 1900s who, when told by the US Navy to remove himself from a particular Frequency responded with: “Say, you navy people think you own the ether. Who ever heard of the navy, anyway? Beat it, you, beat it.” The spectrum will no longer remain closed to the ears and eyes of the public, and instead will be reunited with the natural landscape of Cabot Square.