Remco Vlaanderen

Radio DOM

Remko Scha is an artist and a scientist. He has built an automatic guitar band (The Machines), designed an image generation algorithm (Artificial) and developed a language processing model (Data-Oriented Parsing). He also works as DJ for the Amsterdam pirate station Radio 100.

At the Institute of Artificial Art Amsterdam (IAAA), Scha collaborates with the artist/engineer Arthur Elsenaar. Their joint projects often involve a new art form invented by Elsenaar: computer-controlled facial expression. The video installation The Varieties of Human Facial Expression, for instance, explores the diversity of expressions that can be displayed by the human face.It shows a real-time-recording of human facial muscles being stimulated by computer-generated electric impulses in an algorithmically determined sequence of combinations; 4096 different expressions (most of which appear rather strange and would be impossible without artificial stimulation) are turned on and off in quick-fire succession.

Elsenaar and Scha recently started a new series of projects which employ automatic radio stations as a medium for algorithmic art. These projects draw on the radio experience of Elsenaar, who ran his own pirate station for many years and who built transmitters for numerous other illegal radio and television stations throughout the Netherlands. For Panorama 2000 they developed Radio Dom, a radio station that permanently broadcasts a continually evolving panorama of sound.

The material for this chance composition is picked up by several computer-controlled surveillance microphones placed on the Dom tower, which scan the heart of Utrecht in search of usable sound sources. These microphone signals are automatically mixed into a soundscape that is broadcast live by FM antennas on the Dom tower. Everyone in the city of Utrecht can receive this signal on the FM band of their radio; the rest of the world can listen via the internet.

Radio Dom transforms the Dom tower into a sensitive subject with 'eyes' and 'ears' aimed at its environment. After Radio Dom, Utrecht may never sound the same again. How does the automatic radio-station interpret the hectic sounds of Utrecht during rush hour? What is the sound of Utrecht when the city sleeps at five in the morning? Radio Dom reconfigures the random sounds of Utrecht into a hybrid soundscape which may be deeply absorbing, if you listen.