PARTICIPATION
Installation:
Bug Tag / How to Build a Meadow
Bug Tag is a played when a micro-radio transmitter sends out cricket field recordings. The space will be filled with 25-30 radios (battery operated and wall plugs) and viewers and participants will be invited to tune the radios to the station transmitting the cricket recordings. Once the crickets are found, the radios will be set down, building a meadow. The radio transmitter is to be placed in the center of the room, allowing bodily interaction in the space to effect the signals being picked up by the radios. When a radio goes out of tune, viewers/participants will be invited to retune the radios, searching through the sea of signals, playing tag with the bugs. Bug Tag invites bodily interaction with Marshall McLuhan’s thoughts of the medium being the message, as well as Anna Friz’s thoughts on reflexive radio (radio as both the medium and the message). As an instillation, it highlights radio as space, both within the room itself and as a third space, once the meadow is created.
Elizabeth Flood is a sound artist working with radio as both an instrument and a medium to communicate from a distance. They are interested in playing in the blurry space between transmission and reception, signal and noise, dreams and waking, here and there. She is curious about what radio would sound like if we didn’t listen ‘to know’? How can we, the listeners, interact with radio if we understand transmission to be an asking act, an event of curiosity? Can we walk not just amongst, but inside radio waves? Flood is a collage artist who works with sonic, textual and visual materials and listens for what is revealed from the act of juxtaposition.
Artist Location: Chicago, IL