2023 - 2019

2023 | 60th Anniversary
2022 | Washing
2021 | Happeners and Radio Cyborgs
2020 | Multi-Action Simulcasting
2019 | Diversity

In 2019 the artsbirthday.net website was updated by ABC:V (Art's Birthday Collective: Vancouver).

 

2018 - 2010

Many new individuals and groups have joined the Art's Birthday network since 2009. The annual event now travels around the world in a spiral: from New Zealand at the south east edge of the International Date Line to Victoria in the north-west. Here are the schedules for the 2010 through 2018.

  • 2018 | Transformation.
  • 2017 | Cross-Current.
  • 2016 | Dedicted to Robert Adrian X (1935 - 2015).
  • 2015 | 1,000,052.
  • 2014 | 1,000,051.
  • 2013 | The 50th Art's Birthday celebration.
  • 2012 | A disparate olio at the end of time.
  • 2011 | Time, etcetera.
  • 2010 | Around the world in 66 hours.

An essay by Peter Courtemanche on CITR FM's annual 24 Hours of Radio Art can be found here: Notes and Thoughts on the History of 24 Hours of Radio Art (2011).

 

2009 | Magical Sound Machines

"Magical sound machines" and "Ecology: water air sound" were the twin themes for this year's celebrations. It was also the 20th Anniversary of this particular Art's Birthday network.

 

2008 | Forever Young

By some twist of fate the theme for this year was "Forever Young: the future of pop music!" .. futurist folk band, 60s reload, opera, a feedback machine, and endless radio. Ward Weis' do it yourself Art's Birthday hat design for 2008 can be downloaded here.

 

2007 | The 100th Anniversary of Radio Broadcast

On December 24, 1906, Canadian engineer Reginald Aubrey Fessenden broadcast from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, a radio program featuring music (O Holy Night) and language (biblical quotations). This broadcast changed the notion of radio as a system of telegraphy (morse-code style signals) to a medium that could be used to deliver the voice of authority to a mass audience. By the early 1930's, the contemporary notion of radio as a broadcast system for entertainment and propaganda was firmly established. For Art's Birthday 2007, artists around the world altered and deconstructed utopian ideas of network, radio, and the voice. An essay by Anna Friz can be found here: Send us your Art's Birthday presence! (Traces of Art's Birthday networks at the Western Front 1989 - 2007).

 

2006 | TransDadaExpress | The 90th Anniversary of Dada

On February 5, 1916, Cabaret Voltaire 8 opened in Zurich. It became a birthplace of DADA and so of Ars Acustica as well. During the First World War which destroyed lives and social values, artists and writers from different countries met in Zurich and created the first multilingual Avantgarde movement, which worked by international networking. Dadaism was an international movement from its very beginnings and spread across the world building centres and epicentres by creating events in New York, Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Barcelona, Cologne, Hannover, Zagreb, Holland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia, Rumania, Hungary, Italy, and South America. Richard Huelsenbeck, one of DADA's founding members, noted: "The word Dada in itself indicates the internationalism of the movement which is bound to no frontiers, religions or professions."

 

2005 | reverie : noise city | (schedule) | (participants) | Kunstradio

is a virtual urban landscape (on the Web). Inside this city, an ever-expanding group of international sound artists will build venues for their work. Reverie imagines an urban landscape that includes a variety of poetic extrapolations on the types of regions that exist in our cities - a merging of Sunset Boulevard, Lower Manhattan, boat houses on the canal, the Surrey Landfill site, and a public botanical garden of the future. Over time, the growing collection of audio art venues will define a structure of neighbourhoods and communities in which artists plan time-based events and engage other inhabitants in collaboration and exchange. There will be an Exchange-Art Festival between all of the artists in the virtual city from Friday, January 14th to Monday, January 17th 2005. This will include on-site performances, concerts, radio-broadcasts and generative audio installations at Western Front, Studio XX, Radio Kinesonus, Kunstradio and other locations around the world. There are two essays from the Reverie catalog available here: Introduction by Peter Courtemanche and When cities sleep, what dreams may come? by Anna Friz.

 

2004 | Scrambled_Bites | Kunstradio

Artists from around the world streamed sensor data with the intent of activating robotic devices in various social spaces. Cake was consumed. The data streaming project was developed during Scrambled_Bites - a year long artist residency at the Western Front. There are two essays from the Scrambled_Bites catalogue available here: Introduction by Peter Courtemanche and Art's Birthday by Anna Friz.

 

2003 | aaeol.ca | Kunstradio

Audio art broadcasts on radio and the Internet: a performance of "Doves are grey" by Sergej Mohntau at Kunstradio (Vienna); voices and telephone art at Western Front (Vancouver); the very first transmission from Radio Kinesonus (Tokyo); web-radio from PING FM (Weimar, Germany); 24-hours of Radio Art at CiTR FM 102 (Vancouver).

 

2002 | aaeol.ca | Kunstradio

24 hours of network radio art connecting The Western Front Grande Lux, CITR-FM 102 in Vancouver, Kunstradio ORF and .. devolve into II .. (streams from Australia, Taiwan, Canada, U.K., Austria, and Italy). CITR-FM presents 24 hours of non-stop live radio art. All three production studios will be taken over by local audio artists and DJs. The Western Front will present web-cast performances by Steve Heimbecker, Sutrisno Haratana and Heri Dono, followed by a lavish dinner with performative interruptions. Kunstradio ORF will present a web-cast and radio broadcast by Austrian artists satellite footprintshop.

 

2001 | 24 Hours of Radio Art on CITR FM 101.9 in Vancouver.

 

2000 | Kunstradio | Western Front | CITR FM - Ubyssey Press

January 16 - live from Vienna, Belgrade, Nove Zamky with Alien Productions, Subtolerance, LENGOW & HEyeRMEarS. January 17th - 24 hours of live radio broadcast on CITR FM 101.9 FM Vancouver, web-cast by the Western Front/FirstFloor Eastside (Vancouver) with connections to Tetsuo Kogawa and DJ Turbonator in Tokyo, Alarm 112 in Copenhagen, Kunstradio (central command station) in Vienna, and Steve Bates in Winnipeg.

 

1999 | Kunstradio | Western Front

Anna Friz at CiTR FM radio in Vancouver produced the 5th edition of "24 hours of Radio/ART". This event connected with non-stop web broadcasts - squished through the web-sites of Kunstradio in Vienna and Western Front in Vancouver. Hundreds of participants from Tokyo, Vancouver, Vienna, Montréal, Linz, New York and more ..

 

1997 - 1989 | Art's Birthday events at the Western Front

Following the death of Robert Filliou in December 1987, it seemed natural for a network to form around Art's Birthday. In the 1990's, in Canada, it was often used as a basis of protest against the severe cuts to Art's funding that were happening at that time. In 1989, the Western Front started to hold annual events on January 17th. These events varied in scope from year to year, sometimes involving a few participating nodes, and other times developing larger international networks. The following are links to documentation of specific events. In 2007, Anna Friz wrote an essay to accompany this chronology: Send us your Art's Birthday presence! (Traces of Art's Birthday networks at the Western Front 1989 - 2007).

  • 1997 | Fax Art Network.
  • 1996 | 24 Hours of Radio/ART on Private Radio FM 89.3 MHz.
  • 1994 | Imag(in)ing Network.
  • 1993 | Art's Birthday Celebration and Protest | MIDI Jam with the ZERO Project in Innsbruck Austria.
  • 1992 | Art's Birthday (with Robert Adrian in residence)
  • 1991 | International Festival of Telecommunications Art
  • 1990 | National Public Holiday
  • 1989 | Hyper Space Radio

 

1974 | Hollywood Edition: Decca-Dance Salutes Network (Souvenir Newspaper)

 

1973 | Robert Filliou lighting the cake in Aachen (Photograph)