Phantom Power

The Hey Robot board game

Today, we’re playing with voice assistants and thinking about the role of voices in gaming with our guest, game designer and NYU professor Frank Lantz. 

Over the past nightmare year of the coronavirus, many of us have been hunkered down, trying to figure out how to pass the time with our families. Board game sales on Amazon were up 4,000% percent in March, when Americans began sheltering in place. And, of course, we’ve also spent way more time interacting with digital technology. These two things have come together in a weird and delightful way in Lantz’s game Hey Robot. 

Created by Lantz’s family-owned company Everybody House Games, Hey Robot is a guessing game you play with a group of friends—including your voice assistant or smart speaker. The premise is simple: Make Google Home or Alexa utter the words written in a deck of cards. The questions it raises are complex: What are these digital entities that many of us interact with daily? How have web searches and voice-based computing changed the way we talk? And what does this reveal about language itself? 

Hey Robot is available in a free online Quarantine Edition that you can play remotely with your friends. The board game edition is available on Amazon.

Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood. 

Fake Cumbia music by Mack Hagood. 

Ambient music clip taken from Hiroshi Yoshimura’s album Green.

 [0:00]

Mack Hagood: Hey, Siri.

[iPhone Beep]

Mack: What’s Phantom Power?

[iPhone Beep]

Siri: Phantom Power, in the context of professional audio equipment, is DC electric power transmitted through microphone cables.

Shall I continue?

Mack: Uh, how about a podcast?

Siri: I don't see an app for that. You'll need to download one.

Mack: Oh no. I meant a podcast called Phantom Power.

Hello?

[Sigh]

[00:35]

[Intro Music]

Mack: Okay, Google. What is the Phantom Power Podcast?

Spacey Voice: This…is…Phantom Power

[Intro Music]

Google Assistant: According to Apple Podcasts, on Phantom Power Mack Hagood explores the world of sound in the arts, music, and culture.

Each episode features the sounds and ideas of a contemporary artist, musician, or sound scholar.

Mack: Good job, Google.

Mack: Hey everyone. Welcome back and happy new year. It's me Mack Hagood. Close enough, Google. Close enough.

Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of Phantom Power. We have a lot of good things in the works for you in 2021. One thing I'm excited about is guest producers.

We have a number of critics and scholars working on Phantom Power episodes, including features on the work of sound artists, Brian Harnetty, Kate Carr and Yoko Ono.

We also have a fascinating piece on voice and disability with influential sound scholar, Jonathan Stern, coming for you this year.

The Hey Robot board game

Today, we’re playing with voice assistants and thinking about the role of voices in gaming with our guest, game designer and NYU professor Frank Lantz. 

Over the past nightmare year of the coronavirus, many of us have been hunkered down, trying to figure out how to pass the time with our families. Board game sales on Amazon were up 4,000% percent in March, when Americans began sheltering in place. And, of course, we’ve also spent way more time interacting with digital technology. These two things have come together in a weird and delightful way in Lantz’s game Hey Robot. 

Created by Lantz’s family-owned company Everybody House Games, Hey Robot is a guessing game you play with a group of friends—including your voice assistant or smart speaker. The premise is simple: Make Google Home or Alexa utter the words written in a deck of cards. The questions it raises are complex: What are these digital entities that many of us interact with daily? How have web searches and voice-based computing changed the way we talk? And what does this reveal about language itself? 

Hey Robot is available in a free online Quarantine Edition that you can play remotely with your friends. The board game edition is available on Amazon.

Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood. 

Fake Cumbia music by Mack Hagood. 

Ambient music clip taken from Hiroshi Yoshimura’s album Green.

 [0:00]

Mack Hagood: Hey, Siri.

[iPhone Beep]

Mack: What’s Phantom Power?

[iPhone Beep]

Siri: Phantom Power, in the context of professional audio equipment, is DC electric power transmitted through microphone cables.

Shall I continue?

Mack: Uh, how about a podcast?

Siri: I don’t see an app for that. You’ll need to download one.

Mack: Oh no. I meant a podcast called Phantom Power.

Hello?

[Sigh]

[00:35]

[Intro Music]

Mack: Okay, Google. What is the Phantom Power Podcast?

Spacey Voice: This…is…Phantom Power

[Intro Music]

Google Assistant: According to Apple Podcasts, on Phantom Power Mack Hagood explores the world of sound in the arts, music, and culture.

Each episode features the sounds and ideas of a contemporary artist, musician, or sound scholar.

Mack: Good job, Google.

Mack: Hey everyone. Welcome back and happy new year. It’s me Mack Hagood. Close enough, Google. Close enough.

Thanks so much for joining me for another episode of Phantom Power. We have a lot of good things in the works for you in 2021. One thing I’m excited about is guest producers.

We have a number of critics and scholars working on Phantom Power episodes, including features on the work of sound artists, Brian Harnetty, Kate Carr and Yoko Ono.

Episode 21 presents a portrait of Iranian experimental composer Siavash Amini. His music, which moves seamlessly between contemplative ambience, menacing dissonance, and spacious melodicism, has been released on experimental imprints such as Umor Rex and Room40. His latest, A Mimesis of Nothingness, just came out on the Swiss label Hallow Ground.

Siavash tells host Mack Hagood that his entire life is based on an experiment and he doesn’t yet know what its outcome will be. This episode traces the contours of that story, from his boyhood as a metalhead in a small Iranian port town to his role in the development of Tehran’s lauded experimental music scene. Along the way, we drill down on the international and internal politics that add danger and difficulty to the life of this outspoken leftest composer.

Amini is forced to navigate not only the authoritarianism of Iranian government censorship, but also the authoritarianism of western tastemakers, who sometimes want him to make the “Middle Eastern music” they hear in their own heads. Steadfast in his individuality, Siavash makes sounds that resist these authorities–the defiant anthems of an imaginary land, population: one.

Most of the music in this episode is by Siavash Amini–listen to it again in this Spotify playlist and check out this great introduction to his music on Bandcamp.

This episode was edited by Mack Hagood.

Transcript

[0:00]

Ethereal Voice: This…Is…Phantom Power

[Transitional Noises, Hammock Creeking]

[0:30]

Mack Hagood: Hey, everyone it’s Phantom Power. A podcast about sound in the arts and humanities. I’m Mack Hagood speaking to you from my hammock in my backyard in Cincinnati, Ohio.

As you’re certainly aware this Corona Virus Pandemic has produced a quiet of sorts. A hush that has fallen over things as normal daily activities have tapered off.

And for those of us who have the will and the privilege to self-isolate, there can be a kind of beauty in this strange calm. A moment for quiet reflection on how we’ve been living and how we got to this place.

Our guest is Siavash Amini, an experimental musician from Tiran who star is quickly rising.

And I had been wanting to talk with him about his music for quite some time. But by the time I started working on this episode, back in late February of 2020, world events pushed our conversations quite beyond music.

Tensions between our two countries were at a level not seen in decades. Donald Trump had pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal and reinstated sanctions.

Then in January, Trump ordered an airstrike that killed top Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani. Iran retaliated with airstrikes that injured over 100 U.S. service people in Iraq.

At this point, Iranians, I follow on Twitter we’re in a full-blown panic, expecting war at any minute. People started leaving Tiran, headed for the safety of the countryside

And those weren’t the only stressors. A couple of months earlier, the Iranian government killed a number of protesters in the streets. And by the time I interviewed Siavash, Iran had joined China and Italy in the top three countries for coronavirus cases.

As we spoke, Siavash was sheltering in place and his country was at a quiet, anxious standstill. But of course, in a couple of months, conditions in the U S would be quite similar.

So, in today’s episode,

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What is radio art? It’s a rather unfamiliar term in the United States, but in other countries, it’s a something of an artistic tradition. Today’s guest, Dr. Colin Black  is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning radio artist and composer. He speaks to us about his practice as a radio artist and the influence the Australian radio program The Listening Room had on Australia’s sonic avant garde. We then listen to his piece Out Of Thin Air: Radio Art Essay #1, which both explores and exemplifies the possibilities of radio art. It’s both informative and a total treat for the ears!The piece was originally commissioned by the Dreamlands commissions for Radio Arts, funded by the Arts Council England and Kent County Council.Out Of Thin Air: Radio Art Essay #1 is a meta-referencing poetic reflection and meditation on radio art underpinned by an artistic treatment of dislocation, transmission, reception and place as a thematic underscore. The work is in the form of an abstract song cycle that chiefly oscillates between “songs” originating from High Frequency (HR) radio static/broadcasts between 3 and 30 MHz and those from interviewees replying to questions relating to radio art. Location recordings, sound effect and musical composition weave this originating material together to form a sonic confluence and juxtaposition of elements to stimulate the listener’s imagination while offering an insight into the work’s subject matter.Interviewees (in order of appearance): Armeno Alberts, Tom Roe, Jean-Philippe Renoult, Gregory Whitehead, Götz Naleppa, Andrew McLennan, Elisabeth Zimmermann, Heidi Grundmann, Andreas Hagelüken, Teri Rueb and Kaye MortleyProducer and Composer: Colin BlackHigh Frequency (HR) radio receiver operator: Dimitri PapagianakisDuration: 00:25:10Music for this episode is by Blue the Fifth.  We also hear a brief excerpt of Things Change,Things Stay the Same by Rik Rue. 

Transcript

 [Ethereal Voice]This is Phantom Power[Robotic Noises]Mack Hagood: Episode 20: What is radio art?[00:00:28]Colin Black: That’s a good question: What is the difference between sound art and radio art? If we think of radio as an art form rather than a media device…[Theme Music][00:00:58]Mack Hagood: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. The podcast about sound in the arts and humanities. Cultures of sound, histories of sound, philosophies of sound. I’m Mack Hagood. and today we’re focused on a single question: What is radio art? I don’t think it’s a particularly common term here in the United States, even among, folks who are pretty into sound. We have sound art and sound installations and field recordings, but those things don’t have a very strong presence in American radio.And then on the radio side, we do have people like the late Joe Frank, who did experimental, freeform radio, but that never went by the name of radio art. And by the way, we do have really cool, independent and internet-based radio stations, shouts to Radius in Chicago and Wave Farm in upstate New York.But in terms of some kind of radio art tradition, you really have to look to countries like Germany and Australia. And so that’s why I invited my guest today: Dr. Colin Black.[Theme Music Fades Out]Colin Black is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning composer, sound artist, and radio artist. His works have been heard on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC, and on stations in Germany and New Zealand and South Africa. He has a PhD from the University of Sydney,

What is radio art? It’s a rather unfamiliar term in the United States, but in other countries, it’s a something of an artistic tradition. Today’s guest, Dr. Colin Black  is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning radio artist and composer. He speaks to us about his practice as a radio artist and the influence the Australian radio program The Listening Room had on Australia’s sonic avant garde. We then listen to his piece Out Of Thin Air: Radio Art Essay #1, which both explores and exemplifies the possibilities of radio art. It’s both informative and a total treat for the ears!

The piece was originally commissioned by the Dreamlands commissions for Radio Arts, funded by the Arts Council England and Kent County Council.

Out Of Thin Air: Radio Art Essay #1 is a meta-referencing poetic reflection and meditation on radio art underpinned by an artistic treatment of dislocation, transmission, reception and place as a thematic underscore. The work is in the form of an abstract song cycle that chiefly oscillates between “songs” originating from High Frequency (HR) radio static/broadcasts between 3 and 30 MHz and those from interviewees replying to questions relating to radio art. Location recordings, sound effect and musical composition weave this originating material together to form a sonic confluence and juxtaposition of elements to stimulate the listener’s imagination while offering an insight into the work’s subject matter.

Interviewees (in order of appearance): Armeno Alberts, Tom Roe, Jean-Philippe Renoult, Gregory Whitehead, Götz Naleppa, Andrew McLennan, Elisabeth Zimmermann, Heidi Grundmann, Andreas Hagelüken, Teri Rueb and Kaye Mortley

Producer and Composer: Colin Black

High Frequency (HR) radio receiver operator: Dimitri Papagianakis

Duration: 00:25:10

Music for this episode is by Blue the Fifth.  We also hear a brief excerpt of Things Change,Things Stay the Same by Rik Rue.

Transcript

[Ethereal Voice]

This is Phantom Power

[Robotic Noises]

Mack Hagood: Episode 20: What is radio art?

[00:00:28]

Colin Black: That’s a good question: What is the difference between sound art and radio art? If we think of radio as an art form rather than a media device…

[Theme Music]

[00:00:58]

Mack Hagood: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. The podcast about sound in the arts and humanities. Cultures of sound, histories of sound, philosophies of sound.

I’m Mack Hagood. and today we’re focused on a single question: What is radio art? I don’t think it’s a particularly common term here in the United States, even among, folks who are pretty into sound. We have sound art and sound installations and field recordings, but those things don’t have a very strong presence in American radio.

And then on the radio side, we do have people like the late Joe Frank, who did experimental, freeform radio, but that never went by the name of radio art. And by the way, we do have really cool, independent and internet-based radio stations, shouts to Radius in Chicago and Wave Farm in upstate New York.

But in terms of some kind of radio art tradition, you really have to look to countries like Germany and Australia. And so that’s why I invited my guest today: Dr. Colin Black.

[Theme Music Fades Out]

Colin Black is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning composer, sound artist, and radio artist. His works have been heard on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC, and on stations in Germany and New Zealand and South Africa.

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It's been a minute, so in this short episode, we update you on what's happening with Phantom Power and what's coming in 2020.

The big (and sad) news is that co-host cris cheek is departing. After two years of lending his unique voice, ideas, and turns of phrase to the show--not to mention producing fantastic episodes like his interview with This Heat's Charles Hayward--cris has decided to refocus on his many other creative endeavors. 

We will miss cris, but the show will go on. And he's been kind enough to let us continue using his golden intro! Check out the pod to hear about some of our upcoming 2020 episodes, with guests including Colin Black, Harriet Ottenheimer, Jonathan Sterne, and Siavash Amini.   

Transcript

[low humming and static playing]

This

is

Phantom Power.

[cars driving with birds chirping in background]

[soft organ plays from lowest key to highest key]

[Mack Hagood]

Strange tones echoing through my Cincinnati neighborhood

[birds chirping with soft tones in background]

bubbling up from underground.

[tones go from low to high]

[WATER SERVICE WORKER]

Alright..

[MACK, laughs]

That is crazy.

[background talking of construction workers with tones playing and birds chirping]

Wow.

Standing in front of my house is this guy from the Cincinnati water department. He’s in front of an open manhole cover. And he’s got a microphone lowered down into the manhole.

[tones and birds chirping playing in background]

And about a block down the street. There’s another open manhole cover. And the tone generator is making the sounds that we hear this upward sweep of tones. It’s called acoustic emission testing, I think. And it’s a sonic way of figuring out if the the water pipes are in good repair. I rather enjoyed the acoustic testing. But unfortunately, it was a harbinger of [laughs] less pleasant sounds that were soon to come.

[loud jackhammers, machines stoping and going]

All the water lines in my early 1900s neighborhood are being torn out and replaced, which, of course, means that all of the streets are being torn out and replaced. And it’s a it’s been a loud experience. Jackhammers. Yeah, this is what it sounds like inside the house.

[machine sounds.]

Idling trucks.

[idling truck noise]

Those are probably the worst, the constant idling machines everywhere. And so hey, it seemed like a perfect time to go ahead and get the roof replaced.

[laughing]

Just throw that into the ongoing cacophony.

[Hammering and footsteps coming through the ceiling]

This is the sound of my roof being torn off, right above my head as I sit in my office where I record this podcast.

[Hammering and tearing]

So yeah, it’s been a little louder around here, a little bit difficult to produce a podcast under these circumstances.

[truck idling]

And it’s fitting because Phantom Power is a little bit under construction, you might say, we’re going through some changes. And so I just want to fill you in on them. The big thing is that cris cheek, my good friend, and partner in this podcast for the past couple of years, is leaving. When we originally set out to make this podcast, we planned on it lasting a year, maybe two years. And it’s become an ongoing concern. And it’s been a lot of fun to do. It’s also very challenging to do. It’s quite time consuming, putting together the show the way we want to put it together. And cris just really felt that this was taking away time from his his poetry and his performance and his visual art and all the amazing things that cris does. So, it’s just gonna be me solo now. And I’m gonna miss having cris, his unique voice, his unique turns of phrase,

It’s been a minute, so in this short episode, we update you on what’s happening with Phantom Power and what’s coming in 2020.

The big (and sad) news is that co-host cris cheek is departing. After two years of lending his unique voice, ideas, and turns of phrase to the show–not to mention producing fantastic episodes like his interview with This Heat’s Charles Hayward–cris has decided to refocus on his many other creative endeavors.

We will miss cris, but the show will go on. And he’s been kind enough to let us continue using his golden intro! Check out the pod to hear about some of our upcoming 2020 episodes, with guests including Colin Black, Harriet Ottenheimer, Jonathan Sterne, and Siavash Amini.

Transcript

[low humming and static playing]

This

is

Phantom Power.

[cars driving with birds chirping in background]

[soft organ plays from lowest key to highest key]

[Mack Hagood]

Strange tones echoing through my Cincinnati neighborhood

[birds chirping with soft tones in background]

bubbling up from underground.

[tones go from low to high]

[WATER SERVICE WORKER]

Alright..

[MACK, laughs]

That is crazy.

[background talking of construction workers with tones playing and birds chirping]

Wow.

Standing in front of my house is this guy from the Cincinnati water department. He’s in front of an open manhole cover. And he’s got a microphone lowered down into the manhole.

[tones and birds chirping playing in background]

And about a block down the street. There’s another open manhole cover. And the tone generator is making the sounds that we hear this upward sweep of tones. It’s called acoustic emission testing, I think. And it’s a sonic way of figuring out if the the water pipes are in good repair. I rather enjoyed the acoustic testing. But unfortunately, it was a harbinger of [laughs] less pleasant sounds that were soon to come.

[loud jackhammers, machines stoping and going]

All the water lines in my early 1900s neighborhood are being torn out and replaced, which, of course, means that all of the streets are being torn out and replaced. And it’s a it’s been a loud experience. Jackhammers. Yeah, this is what it sounds like inside the house.

[machine sounds.]

Idling trucks.

[idling truck noise]

Those are probably the worst, the constant idling machines everywhere. And so hey, it seemed like a perfect time to go ahead and get the roof replaced.

[laughing]

Just throw that into the ongoing cacophony.

[Hammering and footsteps coming through the ceiling]

This is the sound of my roof being torn off, right above my head as I sit in my office where I record this podcast.

[Hammering and tearing]

So yeah, it’s been a little louder around here, a little bit difficult to produce a podcast under these circumstances.

[truck idling]

And it’s fitting because Phantom Power is a little bit under construction, you might say, we’re going through some changes. And so I just want to fill you in on them. The big thing is that cris cheek, my good friend, and partner in this podcast for the past couple of years, is leaving. When we originally set out to make this podcast, we planned on it lasting a year, maybe two years. And it’s become an ongoing concern. And it’s been a lot of fun to do. It’s also very challenging to do. It’s quite time consuming, putting together the show the way we want to put it together. And cris just really felt that this was taking away time from his his poetry and his performance and his visual art and all the amazing things that cris does. So, it’s just gonna be me solo now. And I’m gonna miss having cris, his unique voice, his unique turns of phrase, his oblique angles of analysis.

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Today we re-cast one of our favorite episodes, an interview with folklorist and Houston native Langston Collin Wilkins, who studies “slab” culture and the “screwed and chopped” hip hop that rattles the slabs and serves as the culture’s soundtrack.

Since the 1990s, many of Houston’s African American residents have customized cars and customized the sound of hip hop. Cars called “slabs” swerve a slow path through the city streets, banging out a distinctive local music that paid tribute to those very same streets and neighborhoods.

Wilkins shows us how sonic creativity turns a space—a collection of buildings and streets—into a place that is known, respected, and loved.

In this show we hear the slow, muddy, psychedelic sounds of DJ Screw and The Screwed Up Click, including rappers such as Lil Keke, Fat Pat, Big Hawk, and UGK–as well as songs by Geto Boys, Willie Dee, Swishahouse, Point Blank, Biggie Smalls, and MC T Tucker & DJ Irv.

Photos by Langston Collin Wilkins.

Transcript

[low humming and static playing]

[CRIS CHEEK]

This…is…Phantom Power.

[Tamborine beat blends in]

Episode 7: Screwed and Chopped.

[Hip hop music with vocals cuts in]

Parental discretion is advised. Welcome to Phantom Power. I’m cris cheek. Today on the seventh and final episode of our first season, my co-host Mack Hagood converses with Langston Collin Wilkins. Langston is a folklorist an ethnomusicologist active in both academia and the public sector. Working as a traditional art specialist at the Tennessee Arts Commission. Mack spoke with Langston recently about his research into Houston’s unique slab, car culture. The city’s relationship to hip hop and hip hop’s to community. Enjoy.

[Different hip hop music plays]

[MACK HAGOOD]

So before we get into the research of Langston Collin Wilkins, maybe we should get one question out of the way. Why would a folklorist be studying hip hop? Don’t they study things like folk tales or traditional music or quilting? Well, in fact the folklorist I know study things like bodybuilding and fashion and internet memes. Folklorists study everyday creativity. One contemporary definition of folklore is “artistic communication in small groups.” As Langston shows, it’s the way a town like Houston gets a look and a sound all its own, but folklore didn’t lead Langston to hip hop. In fact, it was quite the other way around.

[Hip hop music cuts out]

[LANGSTON COLLINS WILKINS]

Back when I was a kid, around 12 years old, I received my first hip hop record, which was the “Ghetto Boys Resurrection Album”  in 1996.

[A song from the album plays]

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, the south side, where Scarface is from that same area. The Ghetto Boys in my hometown heroes as they are for everyone growing up in Houston in those communities. I just became obsessed with hip hop, and not just the music, but just the larger culture and community surrounding it.

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