“All radio Is dead”, is a phrase I have often heard spoken in recent years as listening habits have changed with the proliferation of on-demand audio services such as music streaming, podcasts and similar programming. It is not a belief that I share. Like many people, I still listen to live FM/AM and Web radio for its sense of immediacy, for its connectedness in real time to my local and my global community. Indeed, in times of natural disasters, a battery-powered radio is often the only method of remaining in touch, to hear emergency warnings and critical updates about the situation when all other telecommunications are down.

In this sound work, Are You Receiving Me? I have imagined a scenario inspired by the film, The War of The Worlds (1953) where a radio reporter utters the line, “All radio is dead” during a live television cross. Using an online morse code generator, I converted this text to morse code and then converted the code to the sound of a morse code transmission. This transmission is repeated multiple times. I also employed an online translator, to record the phrase, “all radio is dead”, being spoken in thirty-one languages from around the globe. Someone, somewhere is scanning the radio dial searching for a clear signal in their language. Rather than the sound work ending in radio silence, I have chosen to extend the sound of radio frequency scanning to the end of the piece. In doing so, it suggests a sense of hope, that all radio is in fact, not dead.

Submitted for 60 Secondes Radio 2025 project : https://60secondesradio.com/

Video : https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5sAgJXCC_Gg

Kenneth Lyons 
March 2025