Poster Statement

There is a variety of artists’ projects dealing with and reflecting the process and actual state of the current convergence between mass media, telecommunications technologies and the computer. Many of these projects take place in the public space of the radio medium and the Internet and are very difficult to grasp inside the traditional venues of (even media-) art.The examples in this presentation all come from the experience of the KUNSTRADIO – an on air and on line radio-and telecommunications-art-site based at the Austrian National Radio, Vienna).

Intro                                                                                                                                                        RADIO THE NE(X)T CENTURY IS the title of an art-project by Bruno Beusch and Tina Cassani. In this project (and others before) the two Swiss artists explore the medium radio (and our culture) as they are changing under the impact of digitalisation. In RADIO THE NE(X)T CENTURY the two artists use the fictitious webcrash of a fictitious on line cult-radio as the starting point for an ongoing radio-(hi)story in actual radioprograms and In the World Wide Web. They appropriate the format and styles of popular radio together with well known presenters, with producers, sound engineers, scientists, theoreticians, curators of technical museums, etc. They seduce listeners to phone in, users to contribute material to a Cyber Memorial, they turn technicians into resourceful actors etc etc.

• Heidi Grundmann, Austria