Art's Birthday at the Western Front.
The 100th Anniversary of Radio: network versus propaganda.
January 14th - 20th, 2007.
Performances, Installations, Web-Casting and On-line Activities.
On Christmas Day 1906, Reginald Aubrey Fessenden transmitted music and voice across the Atlantic in the first radio broadcast in history. This broadcast changed the notion of radio as an open system of morse-code style signals to a medium that could be used to deliver the voice of authority to the masses. By the early 1930's, the contemporary notion of radio as a receiver of propaganda was firmly established.This year Art's Birthday at the Western Front celebrates and deconstructs utopian ideas of network, radio, and place (the mix between localism and globalism).
Featuring: Deanne Achong, Kate Armstrong, Don Chow (in Tokyo), Joelle Ciona, Elizabeth Fischer, David Floren, Anna Friz, Glenn Gear, Volkmar Klien (in Vienna), Second Front, Steve Heimbecker, Oliver Hockenhull, Roberto Paci Dalò, Matt Smith, Lori Weidenhammer, and Absolute Value of Noise. Remote jamming with CHOWDOWN (Laura Kavanaugh and Ian Birse in Regina), Society of Algorithm (on the net), and the Velvet Factory (in Rimini).
Interdisciplinary artists Elizabeth Fischer and Lori Weidenhammer will keep diaries of thoughts, poetry, and images, in reaction to the theme of the festival and the events in Vancouver and around the world. Elizabeth Fischer is a reknown musician, writer, painter and new media artist. She designed the interface for Reverie (Art's Birthday 2005). Lori Weidenhammer works with performance, public art, photography and poetry. She is currently working on The Beespeaker Project and has done a number of on-line diaries for telecommunication art projects.