Bernhard Loibner

Radio Art

Radio Art has for a long time been a constant field or work for me. Radio art means that transmission through radio waves in the realm of public radio were part of the concept of all these pieces. Most of it (if not everything) is related to a radio program titled Kunstradio-Radiokunst which has been on air for more than 25 years now on the Austrian public radio ORF. Kunstradio has been (and still is) a place for experiments on the public radio. Besides the radio broadcast they were pioneering broadcasting on the web (in the mid-1990s) as well as organizing live events, often in combination with radio transmission and webcasting. I did create several recorded and live radio pieces for them, as well as participating in numerous webcasts and live shows during these last 20+ years.

A good deal of my radio based work has been realized together with Tom Sherman, a video artist, writer and narrator based in Syracuse, NY. Sherman & me have been collaborating under the moniker of Nerve Theory since 1998, creating radio pieces, audio recordings and audio-visual live performances. To date the latest radio piece we created is titled “Is the imagination analog or digital?” and was produced and broadcast in 2017.

Another sample of radio based work is this recording of a live radio performance by Didi Bruckmayr (voice) & myself (voice processing & electronics) during the Art’s Birthday Party at the studios of the Austrian public radio ORF and broadcast at Kunstradio-Radiokunst in January 2012.

A world full of stimulus and noise is also full of toys that create (to the suffering of annoyed parents) all sorts of sounds and noises: speaking, singing, barking, bleating, hooting, cheeping, beeping, plonking, rattling, blaring, groaning, etc. With Portraying the Spectra of Toys portugese composer and sound artist João Castro Pinto and myself aimed to reveal and portray what seems lost in a cloud of insignificant noise: the hidden and interesting sound spectrum of toy instruments. The “toy-sonata” was built of samples of several pre-recorded instruments as well as live manipulation and processing of some of those instruments. The piece was performed on April 18, 2010 in the radio studio and broadcast live in 5.1 Dolby Surround.

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