On Transmitting Ideology Listen to the audio montage online.
Public Demonstration: As We Walk the Streets Our Bodies Pierce Magnetic Fields
The aerial frequencies of the urban space are congested with transmissions - radio transmissions were orchestrated into a marching symphony of noise. An insurgency of 20 players holding wooden guns outfitted with a variety of electronics from radios to chirping circuit boards to magnetic field detectors marched from Siegessäule to Haus der Kulturen der Welt. This noise march enacted by 20 players was one section of the Moving Forest collaboration that will took place February 1st 2008 as part of transmediale.08: CONSPIRE...
The marchers were part of a radio cloud as the pocket radios mounted onto the guns were tuned to a frequency transmitted from a miniFM transmitter that was part of the march. The tranmission is an audio montage of transformative speeches by Western leaders. This audio montage continues to be edited and expanded.
Video stills from Radio Gun Revolt, Berlin, February 1st 2008
photograph by Jonathan Groger
Gallery Installation: On Transmitting Ideology at Vox Populi
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The installation presents eleven wooden guns outfitted with radios broadcasting declarations on freedom and transformation in our society.
As I was listening to famous historical speeches concerning U.S. politics, I primarily became interested in the rhetoric that has established “Conservative” vs. “Liberal” ideology in the United States. Unfortunately due to the quality of sound of early 20th century speeches such as an excellent speech by Calvin Coolidge declaring the need for an imperial reach by the United States in the name of liberty, I narrowed the selection to speeches since the second half of the 20th century.
The broadcast is 18 minutes long and begins with the famous declaration by Barry Goldwater “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The broadcast includes an excerpt from a debate between Buckley and Chomsky, and excerpts from speeches by Reagan, Martin Luther King, and Obama. For the most part I left the excerpts intact; it is only with King’s speech in opposition to the Vietnam War that I withdrew “Vietnam”, because his arguments against our intervention in Vietnam parallel all to well the current war in Iraq.
In the upper right corner of the gallery on a shelf sit a CD player connected to a miniFM transmitter. On each table are five hand-crafted wooden AK47s and Uzis (one is also mounted on the wall), each gun has an exposed pocket radio tuned to the transmitter. Listen to the audio montage online.