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The Radio Art Hour: 31 Down, Anna Friz (Audio)

Sep 16, 2023
Produced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellows and Artistic Director Tom Roe.
This week tune in works from 31 Down and Anna Friz. 31 Down creates darkly themed, romantic performance work with an emphasis on sound design, imagery, and mood. The works consist of live performances, installations, live networked performances and streaming works. Ryan Holsopple, founder and Artistic Director, develops and programs interactive systems to create and control the performances. Here, their "Naomi, Hotel Room" is featured. Then Canadian radio artist, now based in California, Anna Friz is featured, with the 2023 work "Revenant." It is made in two parts, exploring mortality, rot, and regeneration, using electronic and radiophonic instruments, and sound from below and above ground. 1: Outside In the increasing heat and haze of summer, the days are long and hot and the nights insomniac. After brief, fitful sleep, the sun is a tarnished penny in the morning when it rises behind an orange haze of smoke and ash from wildfire. Stuck indoors when the air is hot and thick, other creatures find their way inside to take refuge with me: coming in along the plumbing, up the drains, in the vents and down the chimney, through the cracks under the door or the walls. Unexpected insects, worms and a lizard that dry on the floor, various arachnids running up the walls, a small bird, a bat. It seems I must change my approach to cohabitation: when the creatures move into my nest, I trade places and take to the airwaves or escape down into their burrows. 2: Revenir The difference between the living and the dead is hard to discern. That which is dry and buried may not lie still, but move, resurface, rehydrate, transform. The dead gone to ground may yet pay visitations, or am I the visitor? Time underground enables metamorphosis of body and senses. The work was recorded in the mighty RP4 studios of the ORF Funkhaus in Vienna and on various locations in Santa Cruz, California. Thanks to Martin Leitner, Elisabeth Zimmermann, and Indexical.