MURMUR - Recording the FM waves, Tuesday 19.02.2019, Bergen, Norway. Radio FM 88.1-107
In the new installation Murmur, presented at Borderline Festival in Athens in April 2019, portable FM-radios are suspended from strings in front of the windows in the exhibition space of the Onassis Culture Center. Visually, the radios shape the continuous, oscillating wave of the Sine wave. A composition of soft, white noise - often associated with radio interference - is broadcast via multiple FM-transmitters: a sonic wave moving from radio to radio throughout the installation (more about the work below).

MURMUR was commissioned by Borderline Festival 2019.
Curator: Michalis Moschoutis
Production management: Christina Pitouli
Line producer: Despina Sifniadou
Technical crew, Onassis Culture Foundation
The work was supported by BEK- Bergen Center for Electronic Arts in the form of a work residency, and by USF Verftet.
Photo above: Andreas Simopoulos

Murmur examines soundscapes in our history which are on their way to obsolescence. In 2017 Norwegian Broadcasting and other radio stations left the FM broadcast band in favour of DAB+. The diversity of programme-makers is reduced to just a few local stations, and the FM band appears as a ghost medium with only remnants of broadcast, interference and blank stations. As new technical inventions enter the market, our soundscapes change character. Typical radiophonic sounds disappear, often without us being aware, as new ones enter the stage. Murmur invites us to retain a curiosity to what is left behind, to what we might otherwise forget or let slip from our consciousness. The installation is an ode to the sounds found at the border between highly present and forever outdated.

Materials: 14 portable radios, 4 FM-transmitters, 1 multichannel media player, mounting hardware.

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