SI28-Radio-Worm/Week2

Radio Worm/Week 2

Hosts

Tommi, Barbara, Kiki, Daan (producer)

Introduction

The second show at Radio WORM was a playful yet hectic one. Many topics flew around the room, with accompanying sounds. Samples of XPUB1 were gathered which Daan flipped into a jingle. Several writing machines were presented. Language and surveillance capitalism became leading themes. Tommi introduced the show to a backdrop of algorithmic music.

Intro | Markov chain compositions

The first sound that was played in the episode was a jingle that Daan composed by putting together all the sounds recorded by the listeners of the first radio show, following the instructions of the game introduced during that episode (see dedicated section for more).

♫ Immediately after that, the first track of Concerto Grosso per i New Trolls was played. The album is a dialogue between a baroque orchestra and a rock quartet, the Italian Prog band New Trolls. The work was conceptualized by the renowned composer Luis Bacalov, and it became the soundtrack of the movie The Designated Victim by Maurizio Lucidi. Tommi proposed to play this music as they love New Trolls and their frontman Vittorio De Scalzi in particular, but mostly because it represents a perfect interconnection of different genres remixed together, creating new experimental creative patchworks.

As the show started, Tommi introduced The Internet Archive Feelings Writing Machine and invited listeners to play with it. Detailed information about how it works below, and in the dedicated page.

A screenshot of gnossiennes.mousereeve.com

♫ As a transition to the following section of the show, Tommi opened their browser and played an endless version of Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes No. 1, created by Mouse Reeve following the principle of a Markov chain.

Slot 1 | Protocols & Publishing Freedom

• ♫ Surveillance Capitalism – Evan Greer
• We played an excerpt of Tommi’s interview with Brewster Kahle, specifically about his views on mega-publishing-corporations and how we can fight back against them. Full recording and transcript on Interview to Brewster Kahle.
  • Barbara: Katherine Hayles argued that you cannot analyse a piece of media without its medium and I think Brewster Kahle’s examples show it also can’t be removed from the systems in which it’s published. DRM (digital rights management) in games is like putting a lock on your files that you can only open by connecting to the storefront, it’s a licence, not ownership. Alternative DRM-free storefronts in the game industry: itch.io and GOG.com. But even they can’t escape outside pressure from Mastercard to censor violent or pornographic content from their stores. How do we protect protocols from this outside corporate influence?
• We played Ursula K. Le Guin’s speech about defending art over profits.
  • Barbara: Brewster Kahle and Le Guin both signal major problems with the publishing industry but while Kahle sees a regulated market and competition as a good thing but the monopolies as a problem, Le Guin argues profit incentives are inherently against making art and wants us to think outside the capitalist system.
• Tommi: Why are we playing all these excerpts and songs? As Kenneth Goldsmith puts it in his Uncreative Writing: The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more. For this radio show, we had so many inputs and so many things to tell that we are just sharing and playing them!
• ♫ De Machine – Sef ft. Abel
  • Barbara: The song is about feeling frustrated to have to participate inside this system’s “machine” and the passivity of everybody with it. But in the last verse, they add a twist, saying:

    Throw a coin in my mouth and then the show will start. But that’s how I get by and make a living. That’s the irony, I am the machine.

Slot 2 | Alphabets

• We played an excerpt of Tommi’s interview with Mary Austin on punctuation and custom punctuation marks. Full recording and transcript on Interview to Mary Austin.

Chinese typewriters

Kiki talked about the history of Chinese typewriters. These typewriters are super complex and hold thousands of characters. Translation from English or western languages has been made possible for quite some time now. But not without any damage, since the Chinese language and in particular typeset is so much more complex. As a symbolic system where characters signify the physical world, Chinese characters more focus on real-world objects rather than abstract human sounds. It means Chinese characters are more like meme or emoji. This art of writing may be understanding both as a means of interacting with reality and as a form of self-cultivation. Different nations have different writing systems, or “protocols”.

The protocol here is that language is no longer just a transparent medium. It becomes the rule that builds the world.

• Daan later gathered several children ABC songs. The languages chosen were the participants first languages and the language with bridges our communication, being Chinese, Italian, Dutch, and English. The ones every kid learn to get their alphabet right. Every country seems to have similar ones. Which hold the same pattern and similar melodies. Therefore, it was very easy to mix them together. During the radio show this resulted in an overlapping and organic mix of four languages in dialogue with each other. Showcasing their similarities and differences at the same time.
  • ♫ Italian: Lucilla - ABC (La canzone dell’alfabeto) 📚 ✏️
  • ♫ English: Finny The Shark - The Alphabet Song
  • ♫ Chinese: Little Fox - bpmf Song (bpmf歌)
  • ♫ Dutch: Het ABC Alfabet liedje leren in het Nederlands

Slot 3 | The Internet Archive Feelings Writing Machine

As introduced earlier in the show, we shared the results that people shared with us after playing The Internet Archive Feelings Writing Machine.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to play the outcome of Tommi and Brewster Kahle playing the writing machine together, but you can find it at the end of the full transcription of the interview.

See Writing Machine Directory/The Internet Archive Feelings Writing Machine.