Research

Re-Imagined Radio is a research project led by John F. Barber that combines literary experiences (like writing, reading, speaking, and listening), media art (like digital sound and graphics and social media) to re-imagine radio as a medium for engaging, immersive, shared storytelling. Research inquiries inform this creative practice and provide an evolving conceptual framework, as well as a growing list of outcomes. This node provides access to these inquiries, the information they provide, and listening opportunities.

Inquiries

These inquiries consider different aspects of radio and sound art to inform the practices of Re-Imagined Radio.

Audio Drama

Not dependent on human voice for narrative, nor radio for distribution, but still evokes drama. LEARN more.

Aural / Oral Stories

Two approaches for knowing through sound(s). One with people, the other with ambient sounds. LEARN more.

Radio Drama

Radio combines dialogue, music, sound effects, and silence to spark listeners' imaginations. LEARN more.

Sound Theory

Evolving underpinnings and framework for radio and sound research and creative practices. LEARN more.

Framework

As a research project, Re-Imagined Radio explores how scripted dialogue, sound effects, music, silence, and imagination can create and sustain an engaging narrative, a sequence of events experienced by listeners. Radio drama provides different narrative experiences, suspense, horror, historical, fantasy, for example. Direct engagement between sound(s) and listeners' imaginations prompts emotion, interaction, participation, and immersion.

Re-Imagined Radio investigates ways of understanding the creation and consumption of radio art and drama outside representation by text, code, and other formal systems associated with the ways "meaning" has been traditionally approached. Instead, this project considers radio storytelling through its re-imagination and re-creation. This approach, called research-as-practice, action research, and/or practice-based research, combines research and creative practice to promote systematic inquiry conducted via practical action in order to devise or test new information and communicate knowledge. Specific research questions include . . .

How, through their re-creation, might we understand radio programs as a form of storytelling?
How might we re-imagine and re-present radio storytelling for contemporary audiences, sophisticated in their use of multiple forms of digital media?
How might these efforts inform best practices for creating engaging and immersive storytelling for the 21st century?
How might these re-imagined radio stories inform our understanding of embodied, shared experience of sound as capable, even desirable, for conveying storytelling?

How?

Re-Imagined Radio offers radio stories as broadcasts, streams, and listening events for audiences local and global. Voice actors, sound artists, musicians, singers, and other creative people help re-image these stories as community storytelling opportunities. Re-Imagined Radio promotes immersive auditory experiences for its audiences, rich with narrative opportunities. With the addition of Internet streaming and recording, Re-Imagined Radio reaches listeners separated by time and distance, unites them in the shared act of listening, and prompts consideration of whether radio art + transmission art = new mode for community storytelling?.

Radio Art + Transmission Art = New mode for storytelling?

Radio art uses radio technologies to transmit (broadcast) content to distant listeners for their consumption via receivers (radios). The transmission capabilities of the radio medium are highlighted . . .
◊ Because of its ability to reach large audiences
◊ Because of the opportunity to utilize the medium in new and different ways
◊ Because the artifact may promote close, attentive listening, and through listening, immersion, engagement.

Radio art is considered from the perspective that sound, listening, and hearing are real and concrete participatory practices. As a result, radio art is characterized as a collision / collusion between the ancient traditions of orality and the instant information access of mass communication systems. Radio art creates immersive contexts rich with aural and acousmatic narrative opportunities. Radio art provides new opportunities for sounds from various sources and cultures to create and sustain new narrative strategies and subvert historical media conventions. Radio art is not necessarily limited to the radio. Radio art may also include public installations, performances, and action art. LEARN more about radio art.

Transmission Art

Transmission arts is a multiplicity of practices and/or performances—like video art, theater, media installation, networked art, and acoustic ecology—that engage aural and video broadcast media. Often, transmission arts are live, participatory, time-based, dynamic and fluid, always open to redefinition, intent to put communication tools in the hands of artists / the public for the realization of democratic cultural communication networks. As a result, the media are used in ways different from their original (commercial) intention. This interplay prompts redefinition(s) between artist and audience, transmitter and receiver, along with the telecommunications airwaves as the site for its practice.

A fine anthology of transmission artists and their work(s) is Transmission Arts: Artists & Airwaves by Galen Joseph-Hunter with Penny Duff and Maria Papadomanolaki (New York: PAJ Publications, 2011). Joseph-Hunter and Papadomanolaki note transmission arts offers a great deal of latitude and creative license to artists and content providers, and future radio assures a medium for its transmission.

Radio Art + Transmission Art = New mode of community storytelling?

The overlap of radio + transmission art promotes sites for narrative and storytelling. Some questions . . .

What has comprised radio art historically?
How was this work created, transmitted, and received?
What might be done with sounds (other than the human voice) not possible before digital technology to create and share compelling radio / transmission arts that is both global in scope and local in focus?
How might radio / transmission arts provide a venue for narrative?
How might these stories be told?
How could these narratives/stories benefit from opportunities for interactivity, collaboration, and social networking among the listeners and between the participants (neé listeners) and the program itself?
How could these efforts help to recenter sound as the primary form of sensory input, even while it is part of a mix of multimedia?
How would we approach the challenge of producing and streaming an original drama for web-based radio?
What might be undertaken in conjunction with such a project (promotional/educational materials, website, social media, etc.) to increase its effectiveness and opportunities for social engagement?

Radio art = a new art form, a new way to create art
Transmission art = a new way to share art
Radio + transmission art = a bridge between art and popular culture.

Why?

Re-Imagined Radio has as its mission to promote community engagement through radio art and performance. What is learned is believed helpful for how future forms of storytelling might be informed by our embrace of digital technology. Desired results: radio art, transmission art, community art. Radio as never before seen, or heard. Radio, an old medium, providing new opportunities for 21st century storytelling, inside your mind.

Outcomes

Information about publications and presentations from the Re-Imagined Radio research project.

2022

Flowers, Kristen. Lend Me Your Ear: Re-Imagined Radio Captures Listners' Imaginations. Vancouver Family Magazine, 1 Feb. 2022, pp. 12, 14, 16.

Juarez, Cambrie. Q+A: Behind the microphone with Re-Imagined Radio creator John Barber. PDX Today, 8 Dec. 2022.
The Vancouver-based radio program produces classic and contemporary stories for broadcast and streaming, as well as one live, on-stage performance each year.

2021

Phillips, Rebecca. "Re-Imagined Radio and CooperCon." Washington State Magazine, Fall 2021, p. 9.
Barber, John. "Preservation through Re-Creation: Re-Newing Radio as Community Storytelling." A Century of Broadcasting: Preservation and Renewal Conference, 22-24 Oct. 2020, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. (Accepted)

2020

Barber, John F. "The War of the Worlds Broadcast: Fake News or Engaging Storytelling?" Radio's Second Century: A Reader, edited by John A. Hendricks, Rutgers University Press, 2020, pp. 96-118.
—. "Future Radio and Social Knowledge Creation in the Humanities." Social Knowledge Creation in the Humanities, Vol. 2, edited by Aaron Mauro, Iter Press. (In press)
—. "Electronic Literature and Sound." Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms & Practices, edited by James O'Sullivan and Dene Grigar, Bloomsbury. (In press)

2019

Barber, John F. "A Mighty Span: Sound, Practice, Community." Resonant Practices in Communities of Sound, SpokenWeb Symposium, 30-31 May 2019, Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

2018

Barber, John. Martians, Moustaches, and Radio Drama. A Case Study for Sound Art Curation by Re-Creation. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, vol. 33, no. 3, Dec. 2018.

2017

Barber, John. Radio Art: A (mass) Medium Becomes An (artistic) Medium. Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, vol. 17, 2017, https://doi.org/10.20415/hyp/017.
Reprinted in French translation as L'art Radiophonique: Histoire d'un Médium de Masse Devenu Médium Artistique, Appareil, vol. 18, 2017.
Reprinted in Art Médium, Média, edited by Pascal Krajewski, L'Harmattan, 2018, pp. 209-226. ISBN: 978-2-343-13800-8.
—. Radio Nouspace: Radio, Sound, and Digital Humanities. Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, vol. 7, no. 1, 13 Oct. 2017, https://www.digitalstudies.org/collections/special/the-digital-humanities-summer-institute/
Reprinted in Digital Studies/Le champ numérique, vol. 8, no. 1, 28 Feb. 2018. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.275
—. "Broadcasting from the Barricades and Beaches: BBC Listeners and Producers Learn the Power of Radio." BBC and the World News Service: Debts & Legacies Conference, 3-4 Feb. 2017, King's College, London, England.

2016

Barber, John. "Curation by Re-Creation: Innovative, New Knowledge Model for Classic Radio Drama." New Knowledge Models: Sustaining Partnerships to Transform Scholarly Production, INKE (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) Conference, 19 Jan. 2016, Whistler, BC, Canada.

2014

Barber, John. Internet Radio and Electronic Literature: Locating the Text in Aural Narratives. ebr [electronic book review], 3 May 2014.
—. Future Audio Drama: Imagine the Possibilities. Audio Drama Seminar, 19-20 Aug. 2014, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. See Birmingham School of Media's Radio Blog.
—. "Radio: Local, Global, Collaborative, Mobile." ICA Mobile Preconference, 21-22 May 2014, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
—. "Sound Curation by Re-Creation: The War of the Worlds Radio (Re)broadcast, Martians with Mustaches: A Case Study and Suggestions." International Sound Arts Curation Series, 15-17 May 2014, Goldsmith's, University of London and The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England.

2013

Barber, John. Audiobiography: 1960s: A Sonic Memoir. Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion, vol. 9, Apr. 2013.
—. "Internet Radio and Electronic Literature: Locating the Text in Aural Narratives." Electronic Literature Organization 2013 International Conference, 24-27 Sep. 2013, Paris, France.
—. "Internet Radio: Radio after the Future." What is Radio? Exploring the Past, Present, and Future of Radio Conference, 25-27 Apr. 2013, University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, Portland, OR.