Sep 122007
 


(Talking) Space to Space is a radio/performance project. Using captured natural radio emissions from celestial objects, Iris reshapes these sounds into an audio composition and flings them back to the stars in a radio broadcast. A poetic gesture, a sensual fiction which takes the past, re-shapes it in real-time and travels with it into the future.

The piece aims to cast the imagination into something beyond humans can experience directly, although the composition is of course very much influenced by what we, or specifically the composer, can experience. In this, the work is also about contradictions, ambiguity and a sense of beyond.

The piece was originally performed on Resonance FM in June 04 and as part of Radio Art Riot during the Frieze Art Fair, October 04. An extract was also featured as part of Radio Day of European Cultures in October 05. An extended version was listed for the PRS New Musci Award in 05. An extract was released on 10″ vinyl by German art label lich-tung in spring 06 and I am ultimately imagining a globe-spanning version of this project involving a series of radio telescopes around the world.

A 13 min stereo extract of (Talking) Space To Space is available on this 10″ split series out on licht-ung. SOLD OUT.

Listen to a 5 min extract of  (Talking) Space To Space

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A Review: 

“Compositions of manipulated radio frequencies are not new but rarely have the depth and ambiance of this release. From a post Cagien perspective these tracks are much more than the sum of their parts and as compositions they are fluid and dynamic. As the opening track hurls clusters of grainy sound at the stereo image, your carried into the cosmos on a wave of particle interference and lo fi crackles & glitches. Cold meteor like sine waves emerge in dissonant collages of abstract soundscapes sometimes dark and brooding others with a more contemplative feel. I particularly like the notion of recording and reshaping these frequencies before flinging them out again as a radio broadcast which we did on Furthernoise  while she was in Bristol performing on the Interplay tour. There is also another radio project Radio Qualia which for interest is worth checking out for its stream of sounds intercepted from space and broadcast live on the internet.

However, it is the hiatus of ‘Talking Space To Space’ as a composition that has that most unique of qualities, the human organisation of technology. Here Iris creates a true hybrid of art and science and all on that most wonderful triumph of human ingenuity, vinyl. Recommended headphone listening.”

(Review by Roger Mills / furthernoise.org)

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