Making Waves

Today's episode is from a live performance of Tree Frog Radio by Ben Donoghue that took place on February 1, 2025. Tree Frog Radio in the Northern Gulf Islands is an unique underground FM radio initiative in British Columbia that uses trees as antenna masts for localized radio broadcasts – expanding a rural island community’s boundaries of the possible. In this radio art performance interviews and field recordings about Tree Frog Radio were mixed together using loopers and feedback systems in order to blur the space between audio documentary, drone and noise.  

Online listeners experienced a special video feed of the performance while in-person audiences got to wander the NAISA North Media Arts Centre in South River and both listen to the audio on a localized radio broadcast and visit Ben Donoghue in a small studio performing on a modular synthesizer.  Following the performance the two audiences joined together in a discussion about the performance and to learn more about Tree Frog Radio from its founders and members who were in attendance. Visit NAISATube channel for a video version of this radio episode.

On today’s episode of Making Waves we will be listening to “Non-predictable” by Omar Reyna. Afterwards we will talk to Omar about his piece which is included in the soon to be released 19th compilation album from The Deep Wireless Festival. Over the next four episodes of Making Waves we will be featuring artists from Deep Wireless.

Reyna’s work “Non-predictable” is an exploration of the sounds of turbulence in nature. Do the sounds of wind hitting trees or the tonal colours of moving water have emotions that fluctuate over time? This 45 minute long form piece is arranged in three sections that are approximately 15 minutes each and there is a radiophonic quality stemming from the associative qualities of the sounds of wind, rapids, ravens and breaking glass.

Omar Reyna is a Mexican-Canadian interdisciplinary artist. He focuses on the intersection of research and the activity of making. And believes that the process of making art while experimenting serves as a form of physical thinking. Much of his artistic practice takes place in the Boreal Forest near Whitehorse, Yukon, where he now lives and works.

On today’s show we will be listening to Lake Composition by Ben McCarthy and April Martin and we will also be talking to them about the piece after we listen to it.

Lake Composition is a work made for video installation but is also appropriate in a radio context. If you are interested in getting an idea of the images in the video work there is a trailer for the piece here:

Lake Composition Trailer

Lake Composition includes poetic journal-like text fragments written by Ben McCarthy. His texts reflect on the nature of love in the age of AI and the mystifying beauty of the Georgian Bay shoreline. He asks, “how is AI teaching us about who we are as desiring animals.”  The sounds in the piece include field recordings from Georgian Bay, interview fragments, and synthesized and AI generated sounds. There are sounds that derive from April Martin’s ceramic sculptures. You will hear the sculptures clanging together in the water as she casts them out to float along the shore.  

In the final 12 minutes of the show we going to turn our attention back to the Sonic Hugs project. Back in September we had an interview on Making Waves with curator Colin Black of This Sonic Life. Today we will listen to Berjalan by Claire Pannell and EMBOSOMED by Colin Black.

Mark Timmings and Brady Marks from The Wetland Project in British Columbia speak to Host and NAISA Artistic Director Darren Copeland. The Wetland Project is an exploration of a 24-hour field recording of a marsh on Saturna Island (ṮEḴTEḴSEN) made with the assistance of recordist Eric Lamontagne. The reverberant soundscape, featuring birds, frogs and airplanes, has been shared with international audiences since 2015 in the form of slow radio broadcasts, new-media installations and musical performances. An audio-visual version of The Wetland Project will be included in the Water themed edition of the livestream event on Dec 12 called You and I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death.

Making Waves is one hour program about radio art and sound art, and is produced by New Adventures in Sound Art's Artistic Director Darren Copeland in South River, Ontario, Canada. The show features Canadian, US, and international artists creating sound-based media art. It focuses on the techniques, processes, and motivations of the artists it features as well as individuals supporting the field through dissemination and curatorial activities. The show is a snapshot of what is happening in sound-based media art in the here and now from a northern perspective.

How can video games be a tool for exploring machine hums and drones? That is one of the subjects we are exploring today on Making Waves with host Darren Copeland. Colin Frank is a percussionist, composer and media artist from Ottawa and based currently in Huddersfield UK. In his installation Soundmap of Sherbrooke’s Machine Songs the gallery visitor uses a joystick and track ball to remix field recordings of back alley machine drones from Sherbrooke Quebec in order to uncover the hidden sonic beauty of industrial urban environments. Watch NAISATube for the video version of this episode and to see the installation. Visit Colin Frank's YouTube channel to watch performances of Noise Fields by Colin Frank and a sound world for small things by Colin Frank and Sam Gillies. 

Making Waves is a monthly one hour program about radio art and sound art, and is produced by New Adventures in Sound Art's Artistic Director Darren Copeland in South River, Ontario, Canada. The show features Canadian, US, and international artists creating sound-based media art. It focuses on the techniques, processes, and motivations of the artists it features as well as individuals supporting the field through dissemination and curatorial activities. The show is a snapshot of what is happening in sound-based media art in the here and now from a northern perspective.

Today’s episode highlights the Sonic Hugs collection curated by Colin Black. Sonic Hugs features nine Australian composers and sound artists that were invited to create original radio art pieces that try to connect the ideas of "Sonic" and "Hug".  I discussed with Colin Black his motives and interests in starting the project and his impressions of the outcomes and responses that emerged. He also elaborated on his experiences making and producing radio art in Australia and the impact programs like The Listening Room had on the direction of his work. All of the pieces in the Sonic Hugs collection can be heard on the Bandcamp site for the project. In this program we will listen to Eve Klein’s Mantra of Enfolding, Ros Bandt’s Sonic Hugs, Cat Hope’s 7 Options and Jim Denley’s Mixmaster Troposphere.

This monthly one hour program is about radio art and sound art, and is produced by New Adventures in Sound Art's Artistic Director Darren Copeland in South River, Ontario, Canada. The show features Canadian, US, and international artists creating sound-based media art. It focuses on the techniques, processes, and motivations of the artists it features as well as individuals supporting the field through dissemination and curatorial activities. The show is a snapshot of what is happening in sound-based media art in the here and now from a northern perspective.

On today’s show we feature multi-disciplinary artist Christine Charette and her performance Roots that Braid Themselves. Christine Charette lives in the Almaguin Highlands region of Ontario. Her performance took place outdoors on July 18 at Warbler’s Roost in South River during World Listening Day. In her performance she had masks, paper sculptures and lines of text displayed on tree branches and stumps. On an elevated platform there was a weathering upright piano that she played along with various effects pedals. In the conversation she reflected on the branching and roots themes in her performance as well as about other points of inspiration for her work.

Christine Charette wrote the following about Roots that Braid Themselves:

"From the world of Electroacoustic Music and Musique Concrète, I explore the profound influence of forest biomes and the symbiotic enchanted world it hides underground. I use recorded sounds from life, distilled through a sampler, and weave them with the sounds of piano, synth. Drawing my sounds intuitively, I allow the forest and its underground networks to inhale and exhale through me, resonating in their vibration, and translating their Affect. I create a space that transports the listener to where worlds of microbial seed banks exist, stardust and roots that braid themselves into stories, where the belly of the Earth speaks."

Click Here to See a Video of the performance featured on today's show.

Making Waves is a monthly one hour program about radio art and sound art, and is produced by New Adventures in Sound Art's Artistic Director Darren Copeland in South River, Ontario, Canada. The show features Canadian, US, and international artists creating sound-based media art. It focuses on the techniques, processes, and motivations of the artists it features as well as individuals supporting the field through dissemination and curatorial activities. The show is a snapshot of what is happening in sound-based media art in the here and now from a northern perspective.

This episode of Making Waves reflects on the life and work of Susan Frykberg (1954-2023). It begins with a radiophonic series of pieces she made called The Audio Birth Project and features an interview with two of Susan's closest Canadian colleagues Jim Montgomery and Tina Pearson. They reflect on Susan's life in Canada, the barriers she overcame and the impact she had on experimental sound art in Canada. The pieces heard on the show are from her Astonishing Sense CD released on the Earsay label in Vancouver.

Making Waves is a monthly one hour program about radio art and sound art, and is produced by New Adventures in Sound Art's Artistic Director Darren Copeland in South River, Ontario, Canada. The show features Canadian, US, and international artists creating sound-based media art. It focuses on the techniques, processes, and motivations of the artists it features as well as individuals supporting the field through dissemination and curatorial activities. The show is a snapshot of what is happening in sound-based media art in the here and now from a northern perspective.

This episode of Making Waves reflects on the life and work of Susan Frykberg (1954-2023). It begins with a radiophonic series of pieces she made called The Audio Birth Project and features an interview with two of Susan's closest Canadian colleagues Jim Montgomery and Tina Pearson. They reflect on Susan's life in Canada, the barriers she overcame and the impact she had on experimental sound art in Canada. The pieces heard on the show are from her Astonishing Sense CD released on the Earsay label in Vancouver.

Making Waves is a monthly one hour program about radio art and sound art, and is produced by New Adventures in Sound Art's Artistic Director Darren Copeland in South River, Ontario, Canada. The show features Canadian, US, and international artists creating sound-based media art. It focuses on the techniques, processes, and motivations of the artists it features as well as individuals supporting the field through dissemination and curatorial activities. The show is a snapshot of what is happening in sound-based media art in the here and now from a northern perspective.

On today's show we listen to spring soundscapes from the region of Canada where "Making Waves" is produced. This year and last year, residents of the Almaguin Highlands region in Northern Ontario had the opportunity to place sound recorders out overnight in order to share the soundscape that is familiar to them. The Almaguin Highlands is a collection of rural villages with populations under 2,000 people that are locating North of Huntsville and South of North Bay in what is often referred to as the Near North. Last year in May on "Making Waves," we featured some of these recordings, and on today's show, we will listen to a new collection recorded these past two months. 

Featured today are recordings made at the following locations: Old Highway Road in Magnetawan on April 9 at 7:20 a.m.; the village of South River on April 14 at 6:30 a.m.; Bray Lake in Machar on May 19 at 4:15 a.m.; Chapman Strong Road in Strong on May 20 at 1:10 a.m.; and Highway 534 in Powassan on May 31 at 5:00 a.m.

This monthly one hour program is about radio art and sound art, and is produced by New Adventures in Sound Art's Artistic Director Darren Copeland in South River, Ontario, Canada. The show features Canadian, US, and international artists creating sound-based media art. It focuses on the techniques, processes, and motivations of the artists it features as well as individuals supporting the field through dissemination and curatorial activities. The show is a snapshot of what is happening in sound-based media art in the here and now from a northern perspective.