Decontrolled
by Kabir Carter
decontrolled 1.mp3 (11.4 MB)decontrolled 2.mp3 (11.4 MB)
Decontrolled
Decontrolled will be an ongoing series of investigations into the redundant energy projections of mainstream radio, and an attempt to alter and reprogram the same in freely distributed audio recordings and other delivery and projection systems. I am interested in looking at how radio is programmed as a monolithically repetitive background for advertisements, and how the recording industry has both benefited from and become destabilized by digital storage and delivery systems for sound work. The first stage of the project involves my taking multiple AM and FM radio transmissions and processing them with analog and digital sound synthesis hardware and software. The processed materials will eventually be stored on compact discs, and will be distributed on city sidewalks in the manner of bootlegs and counterfeit goods. In comparing two forms of acoustic dissemination—one heavily regulated, the other illicit—I will try to show how what the public is allowed to listen to is controlled on both ends, and try to find ways to extend listening modes as an alternative to controlled acoustic redundancy. Further, I hope to link the experience of the street vendor with that of the producer of counterfeit cultural materials, while somehow attempting to "decontrol" or deprogram the rhythmically, sonically, and narratorically overprogrammed and overprocessed systems that drive radio broadcasting content.
Decontrolled, March, 2005 Radio Programming Content Modified by Analog Synthesizer Modules
The title of the project refers not only to the act of decontrolling the distribution of materials (such as an illicit substance) but also to the acoustic and physical architecture of the radio station. For discrete recording spaces—or at least the enclosed areas that are designated for the capturing and processing of sound events—are often referred to as "control rooms," and the primary point for transmitting and receiving acoustic information to and from the entire station is called "master control." Viewed broadly, any audiovisual monitoring or auditing site (such as those found in some retail outlets, domestic spaces, or correctional facilities) can be a control room. Decontrolled aspires to develop systems that can uproot multiple forms of social and physical containment as found in control environments.
Through periodic physical deliveries of processed recordings, Decontrolled will comment on the criminality of bootlegging, or a"failure to disclose the source of a sound recording"; the mechanical reproduction of cultural content and the limits of cultural property rights; and the role of the "street" in validating cultural content for its subsequent broadcasting by the radio industry (an industry that has frequently failed to disclose the sources of its broadcast materials). As composer and theorist Barry Truax has noted, the advertising industry driven model of radio programming operates under the assumption that acoustic materials cannot actually critically engage listeners, but must make the listener's everyday life "tolerable so that the listener comes to rely on its presence" (Acoustic Communication, p. 161). Is it possible to take the energy of this extant system and reconfigure it for a more dynamic and engaged listening experience? If so, what platform and listening space can it thrive in?
To enlarge the breadth of the question: can the idea of a radiophonic listening experience be mixed with a more physical delivery system, such as the street vendor's—with projected sounds reflecting of off, traveling past, and absorbed by passersby and roadway traffic? And can the use of multiple and variable signal processing systems coupled with variable sound gathering and delivery systems shift and widen the parameters of auditory reception and interactivity? Is it at all possible to reconstruct a conventional one-way signal chain so that a listener can dynamically respond to received materials? These are some of the possibilities that I propose to explore in Decontrolled.
Notes on Sound Samples
The sound samples included are from a mono recording of the first run through of modified transmissions played back over a four channel system. All of the sounds heard are from speech, music, and noise gathered from radio receivers and modified by analog synthesizer modules. As part of a residency at Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, both digital and analog systems are being developed and tested to both analyze and process radiophony in its various forms.
Canal Street Background
Manhattan's Canal Street is an historically and contemporarily charged site for considering the notion of the counterfeit. Once an actual waterway, it was eventually filled, and continues to carry a liquid name in spite of its obvious solidity (Canal Street Canal, a postcard project by Matthew Buckingham, vividly highlights the street's functionally tragic story). And at present, because of an imbalance in toll rates in the city, Canal's roadway is as much an expressway as it is a street.
Canal Street near Wooster Street, April, 2005
While postwar Canal Street was a site for the selling of stationery products, plastic materials, and surplus electronics, today's Canal Street is more of a gray market and counterfeit bazaar of fashion accessories and digital media of disputed origin. In a recent New York Times article, denizens of the city's art world are captured lamenting the demise of one of the last plastics retailers, whose goods they regularly use in their work. Given Soho's past as a light industrial sector, it is certainly evocative that plastic—a late industrial material that has found its way into the digital age—is one of the last semi processed resources to leave the area. For plastic (or at least its easy procurement on Canal Street) played a fundamental role (along with rubber and photoengraving technology) in the development of Fluxus, who distinctively resisted art consumerism by emulating low consumer aesthetics (and who inadvertently helped usher in the gentrification of Soho through its refurbishing of local real estate). The see-through plastic containers that encapsulate many Fluxus works can still be found at at least one plastics outlet, though for how long is unclear. And among other nearby locations, 359 Canal Street (whose tenants have included a plastics dealer and Dick Higgins) was a physical focus or Flux activities including indoor and outdoor realizations of various performance works. At one time the address was even used for warehousing and selling Flux goods.
359 Canal Street, April, 2005
Today's Marketplace
Today, 359 Canal Street's roadside storefront, like many others on the street, appears to be broken up into a collection of discrete retail concerns, including the sales of handbags, ties, vanity plates, plastic windup toys, and many other goods. The goods showcased share these qualities: affordability, disposability, and ambiguous provenance. Along the length of the street, innumerable and similarly organized storefronts and subdivisions of storefronts are open for business, and nearly all of them sell the same type of consumer goods. Plastic—as a euphemism for cheap and fake product—continues to thrive on Canal Street.
One step removed from this group of sellers are vendors who present their goods neither inside nor outside an established storefront. Instead, they might have a small vertical column of sales space on the face of a building, or might be selling from a folding table on the sidewalk, or even from a laundry cart, handtruck (supporting a cardboard box filled with goods), or large plastic bag. In some cases, these vendors sell goods that might be regarded by the law as wholly counterfeit or pirated. And in the case of acoustic media, Compact Discs are the preferred format for selling product. In this way, plastic will physically remain on the street, for the substrate for CDs is made of polycarbonate.
Pirating, Promotional Strategies, and Redundancy
While the Recording Industry Association of America has provided easy-to-read information on how to discriminate between counterfeit CDs and recording industry sanctioned media, it is more difficult to find the same kind of information concerning the recording industry's inflation of CD prices over the past decade. As long as consumers feel that they are being hijacked at record stores, they will seek out pirated CDs. And although one can read subversive intent in the act of manufacturing, selling, or sharing acoustic materials, in most cases the material is not modified, and merely folds into extant publishing and broadcasting systems as a promotional tool.
Vendors are, for the most part, feeding back into an established marketing and sales loop. In the case of Canal Street (and much of New York City), the number of pirated recordings sold on Compact Discs (and in particular, recordings that are considered at least partly modified, such as Mix CDs) appears to have a small economic impact overall—especially when considered against the powerful marketing value of product bought on the "street." With this in mind, it should be understood that the recording industry and the radio industry have chosen to "embrace" bootlegs by at least partially encouraging the propagation of the same in the form of exclusives, white labels, test pressings, and other "anonymous" marketing tests of product.
Canal Street and Centre Street, April, 2005
Auditory Scene Analysis or How to Listen to the Radio on Canal Street
Given the acoustic richness of urban environs, the overall failure of radio to creatively consider listening (and the listener's) space in its broadcast content, and the redundancy found in sound materials sold on Canal Street (and distributed and propagated throughout the city and elsewhere), it is not only imperative to develop alternative radio programming and production methods, but also variant modes of listening to old and new radiophonic materials. Multiple strategies are possible, but as a base, one can begin with Barry Truax's consideration of the end user's listening space, and the radio industry's inversion of foreground sound into a repetitive background comprised of radio station IDs and commercial product themes (Acoustic Communication, 153). Is it possible to use this kind of material and one's own listening space as a source for driving different listening strategies? Are there any simple solutions to decontrolling radio within earshot? With this in mind, perhaps one departure point can be erstwhile Flux artist George Brecht's work Instruction, which reads: "Turn on a radio. At the first sound turn it off." Repeated performances, carefully timed, and played with an ear for one's surroundings might yield audibly engaging results.
all images© Kabir Carter