MISSION/HISTORY

free103point9 is a non-profit arts organization focused on establishing and cultivating the genre Transmission Arts. This genre encompasses a diversity of practices and media working with the idea of transmission or the physical properties of the electromagnetic spectrum. Transmission art is generally a participatory live-art or time-based art, and often manifests as radio art, video art, light sculpture, installation, and performance. free103point9 activities support and promote artists exploring transmission mediums for creative expression. free103point9's programs include public performances and exhibitions, an online radio station, the free103point9 Transmission Artists, an artist residency program, a distribution label, an education initiative, a sculpture garden, a study center, and an online archive.

Founded in 1997 as a microcasting artist collective in Brooklyn, NY, free103point9's mobile operations made airtime available to community voices, local bands, and most significantly to a group of under-served artists shaping conceptual works specifically for radio transmission. free103point9 established itself as a non-profit in 2002. free103point9 also has a myspace page here.

To join free103point9's weekly e-mail list submit your contact details here.

PROGRAMS & ACTIVITIES

PERFORMANCE/EXHIBITION/TRANSMISSION SERIES: Each year free103point9 organizes installations, performances, and site-specific projects with artists using transmissions mediums for creative expression. free103point9 presents these public programs at our upstate location, Wave Farm; in our Brooklyn, NY studio and in partnership with like-minded organizations throughout the world. Selected partners include: Anthology Film Archives, NY; Art in General, NY; Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Center for Contemporary Art Laznia, Gdansk; Electronic Arts Intermix, NY; Deep Listening Institute, Kingston; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Hallwalls, Buffalo; Hogar Collection, Brooklyn; The Kitchen, NY; Lincoln Center Out of Doors, NY; LMCC, NY; The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; The New Museum for Contemporary Art, NY; NAMAC; NY Center for Media Arts, Long Island City; The Ontological Theatre, NY; Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Lake Worth; PERFORMA, NY; Rhizome, NY; The Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico; -scopeNewYork; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; Spark Festival, Minneapolis; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and White Box, NY, among many others.

FREE103POINT9 ONLINE RADIO: free103point9 Online Radio is available around the clock and features live weekly programs, special guest segments, selections from free103point9's archives, audio theater, and other forms of radio art. free103point9 Online Radio also features live on-location coverage of performances and events involving artists working in transmission arts. The curated pre-recorded content tracks movements in experimental sound art and fringe music genres such as noise, free jazz, and avant-folk.

FREE103POINT9 TRANSMISSION ARTISTS: free103point9 supports a core group of artists exploring transmission as a medium for creative expression. These artists incorporate transmission practices in their performance, sound, video, and sculptural work.

AIRTIME ARTIST RESIDENCY PROGRAM: The AIRtime residency program provides artists with valuable space in which to concentrate on new transmission works and conduct research about the genre using free103point9's resource library and equipment holdings. Ten residents are selected from an open application process each year. The residencies take place at free103point9's Wave Farm, a retreat-like setting on 30 acres in upstate New York. The AIRtime annual deadline is April 1st.

DISPATCH SERIES: Launched in the fall of 2001, free103point9's Dispatch Series is a showcase for free103point9 transmission artists and collaborators. These releases are live recordings from free103point9 events, thematic compilations, and commissioned artist's projects. free103point9 Dispatches are available at Printed Matter, Inc., Kim's Music and Video in New York and at all free103point9 events. Dispatches are also distributed to stores and online Squid Co, and the free103point9 website.

RADIO LAB: Education is a key component of free103point9's mission. Each year, free103point9 organizes a series of workshops on transmission as a creative medium, how transmitters work, and the history of broadcasting. "Radio Lab" was spawned from a 1999 free103point9 education program with youth from East Harlem's Kids Discover Radio, an after school science program in a housing project; and at El Puente, a Williamsburg-based neighborhood center in Brooklyn. free103point9 Radio Lab seminars have since been presented at educational and cultural institutions throughout the United States including Brooklyn College, NY; Brown University, RI; Columbia University, NY; Cornell College, IA; Flux Factory, NY; New York University's ITP Program, NY; OfficeOps, NY; Participant, Inc., NY; Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory PA; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum NY; The Kitchen, NY; The New School, NY; and annually, at NYC Grassroots Media Conferences and free103point9's upstate and Brooklyn locations.

WAVE FARM TRANSMISSION SCULPTURE GARDEN: The Wave Farm Transmission Sculpture Garden provides a unique opportunity for artists to realize long-term outdoor transmission-based installations open to the public. The Garden's 2007 inaugural installations feature works by Matt Bua and Jeff Feddersen. Artists are invited to submit proposals for future installations in an annual three-part application process. The first application deadline is September 30.

STUDY CENTER & ONLINE ARCHIVE: Wave Farm Study Center construction began on April 11, 2006. This in-progress public resource will house the AIRtime residencies, the free103point9 archives, a gallery/performance/recording space, and a reference library featuring listening and viewing copies of key transmission works past and present. The digital components of the free103point9 Wave Farm Study Center collections, free103point9's Online Archive, provides access to recordings, transmission artworks, and ephemera. The free103point9 Collection consists of early microradio broadcast collaborations among Brooklyn-based artists, live event recordings, and original transmission art works including supporting ephemera and documentation.


Tune(In))) Santa Fe (2004) & Spectral Garden (2006)

STAFF

Lee Azzarello, Brooklyn Studio Coordinator

(la @ free103point9.org)

Sarah Margaret Halpern, Brooklyn Program Coordinator

(smh @ free103point9.org)

Galen Joseph-Hunter, Executive Director

Guiding free103point9's transition to a nonprofit organization, Galen Joseph-Hunter has served as Executive Director since 2002. Simultaneously, she has worked at the venerable video art organization Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) since 1996. Over the past ten years, she has organized numerous exhibitions and events internationally including Video Jam (2001), co-curated with Michael Rush, at the PBICA, FL; Video Windows (2001) at the Stefan Stux Gallery, NY; Interactions (2002), co-curated with Lori Zippay, at the NY Center for Media Arts; Airborne (2005) in collaboration with and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY; Spectral Garden (2006) free103point9 Wave Farm, Acra, NY; [silence] (2007), co-curated with Dylan J. Gauthier, at Gigantic ArtSpace, NY; Off The Grid (2008), co-curated with Tianna Kennedy, Tom Roe and Jacqueline Shilkoff, at The Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY. Joseph-Hunter has served as a panelist/reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Experimental Television Center, and Meet The Composer, among others. (gjh @ free103point9.org)

Tianna Kennedy is a Brooklyn, New York-based cellist, sound and transmission artist, curator, events coordinator, adjunct professor, and writer. Kennedy holds a Masters degree from NYU's Performance Studies Program, and is actively involved with public and live-art; beginning in 1997 as a staff member of liveartmagazine in Nottingham, England. Tianna has co-curated countless events with fellow Brooklyn-based art organizations, activists, and artists, and is herself an active artist performing and showing locally and internationally. She is also deeply involved in New York's experimental music scene, recording and performing frequently. Kennedy co-founded the August Sound Coalition in 2004 and the Empty Vessel Project in 2005. Kennedy joined free103point9 as a staff member in 2003. Kennedy has led radio workshops at Columbia University, the free103point9 Project Space, Participant, Inc. and Office Ops. She has also lectured at Deep Wireless's Radio Without Boundaries and Grassroots Media conferences. In 2006/7, Kennedy designed and taught "Radio Culture" and "Sight, Sound, and Motion" at Brooklyn College. (tk @ free103point9.org)

Tom Roe, Program Director

free103point9's Tom Roe performs with transmitters using multiple bands (FM, CB, walkie-talkie), as well as prepared CDs, vinyl records, and various electronics. He co-founded microradio stations 87X in Tampa, FL and free103point9 in Brooklyn, NY. Roe has written about music for The Wire, Signal to Noise, and The New York Post, among others. His writing about Free Jazz in New York recently appeared in The Wire's 20th Anniversary publication Undercurrents (Continuum). Roe has also spoken on panels for Fairness and Accuracy in Media, the Grassroots Radio Conference, and Anarchist Forum, as well as lead workshops on transmission practices at Columbia University, NYU's ITP, Mattress Factory, The Kitchen, and Brooklyn College. (tr @ free103point9.org)

VOLUNTEERS & FOUNDERS & FORMER STAFF

Interns & Volunteers

free103point9 relies heavily on an extraordinary community of interns and volunteers. For information about getting involved, please send an email to Galen Joseph-Hunter (gjh @ free103poinr9.org.)

Important thanks and present acknowledgement goes to: Victoria Estok, Greg Fox, Ian Page, and Alice Planas. Past actions, ongoing efforts, and special thanks: Roshan Abraham, Valerie Allen, Allie Alvarado, Cecily Anderson, Greg Anderson, Mark Anderson, Tim Annett, Phyllis Baldino, Phil Ballman, Mara Barenbaum, Jeffrey Barke, Giancarlo Bracchi, Broklyn Beats, Erika Biddle, Kelly Benjamin, Matt Bua, Jennifer Cohlman, Greta Cohn, Aaron Davidson, Briana Davis, Dharma Dailey, Carrie Dashow, Melissa Dubbin, Andrew Duetsch, Jess Dunne, Gabriel Farrell, EAI, Lily Gottlieb-McHale, Kurt Gottschalk, Josh Haglund, Sarah Margaret Halpern, Michele Hardesty, Cortney Harding, Patrick Heilman, Cathy Hersh, Ryan Holsopple, Violet Hopkins, I-Sound, Mikey IQ, Eli Joseph-Hunter, Dave Kay, Professor Klystron, Emily Lambert, Kenneth Lang, Sarah Lippek, Jeanne McCabe, Kevin & Jennifer McCoy, Eric Morrison, Tom Mulligan, Billy Nastyn, Caireen O'Hagan, Alice Planas, Seth Price, India Richards, Michelle Rosenberg, Ron Rosenman, Eliott Stapleton, James Trimarco, Brad Truax, Russ Waterhouse, Fritz Welch, Eugene Won, Philip Von Zweck. Special thanks to Screw Music Forever who for many years donated hosting for free103point9's website.

ADVISORY BOARD & BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Advisory Board

Melissa Dubbin + Aaron Davidson

Melissa Dubbin + Aaron Davidson are artists exploring the intersection of sculpture, video, sound and installation through the creation of computer-driven opto/electro/mechanical objects.

Kenny Goldsmith

author of eight books of poetry, founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb, and the editor "I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews," Goldsmith is also the host of a weekly radio show on New York City's WFMU. He teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania, where he is a senior editor of PennSound, an online poetry archive.

Eli Joseph-Hunter

Eli Joseph Hunter is a filmmaker and landscape artist. He recently completed a commissioned time-lapse film of the Frank Gehry Performing Arts Center construction at Bard College. Joseph-Hunter serves on the Board of Directors of the New York State Urban and Community Forestry Council; is the woody plant expert at The Phantom Gardener in Rhinebeck, New York; and is currently working on establishing an arboretum in Greene County, New York.

Barbara London

Barbara London is an Associate Curator in the Department of Film and Video at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Kristin Lucas

Kristin Lucas is a video, installation, and performance artist. Her videos have addressed the alienating and incapacitating effects of our relationships with computers, automated tellers, television, and other forms of mediated communication.

Michael Rush

Michael Rush, Director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, is also a curator, writer, and critic. Rush is the author of three books published by Thames and Hudson, London: Video Art, 2004, the first major survey of the field in more than twenty years; New Media in Art, 2005, which is a fully revised version of his best-selling New Media in Late 20th Century Art, 1999. He has been a regular contributor to The New York Times, Art in America, artnet and several other publications.

Michael Schumacher

Michael Schumacher is the co-founder of Studio Five Beekman and Diapason Gallery and a composer of electronic sound installations.

Gregory Whitehead

Gregory Whitehead is a playwright, audio artist, and producer of over 100 radio plays, essays and voiceworks, broadcast throughout North America, Europe, and Australia. He is also the co-editor of Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio and the Avant-Garde, and author of numerous essays on media, politics, and cultural memory.

Board of Directors

  • Melissa Dubbin, President
  • Eli Joseph-Hunter, Vice President
  • Aaron S. Davidson, Treasurer
  • Galen Joseph-Hunter, Ex-officio

FUNDERS & SPONSORS

Funders

free103point9 is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Peter Norton Family Foundation; and with public funds through the Electronic Media and Film Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; the Greene County Legislature through the County Initiative Program, administered in Greene County by the Greene County Council on the Arts; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional program support is provided by Experimental Television Center; Meet The Composer's JPMorganChase Regrant Program for Small Ensembles; the Brooklyn Arts Council JPMorgan Chase Regrant Program; the Puffin Foundation; the Joseph Family Charitable Trust; India Richards; and other generous individual donors. Past programs have been made possible by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; CEC ArtsLink; and Mondriaan Stichting.

Sponsors

free103point9 Wave Farm programs are made possible, in part, through generous discounts from Slater's Great American Food Store, Cairo, NY; Mid-Hudson Cablevision, Catskill, NY; and Big Top Rentals, Cairo, NY.

Support free103point9

free103point9 is a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt organization. Contributions to free103point9 are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law. Please contact Galen Joseph-Hunter (gjh @ free103point9.org) for more information. Donations may be made by check payable to: free103point9, 5662 Route 23 Acra, NY 12405 or by credit card via PayPal. Click on the button below to make a secure online contribution.

free103point9 also welcomes equipment donations.