More ephemeral findings on the tour:
1) A very old globe with tape marks of directions of broadcasts from the station.
2) A flattened version of basically the same thing.
3) Radios and tubes
Radio Canada International ’s shortwave broadcasting station on the Tantramar Marsh between Sackville, NB and Amherst, NS is undergoing some serious transformations due to federal cuts to the CBC. Coincidentally, my grandfather and I had booked a tour there yesterday, which I had invited my friend Daniel Espeset along to join us. It was an incredible experience, especially in light of this project.
Despite the recent cuts, much of the business such as ordering new equipment, maintaining the site, and it’s programming continued on as usual. Our tour guide Marcel, was great, very informative, had been working there for 6 years, and had worked for CBC before that in as a technician in the television and FM radio sectors. His experience with federal cuts to the CBC were definitely not new (both Mulroney and Cretien made cuts in the 90′s ), so discussion around that was fairly weathered and calm with him. There was plenty of really useful information coming our way, and I am not a well versed reporter myself, so could not contain all of it, but Daniel and I managed to get a few pretty good shots of the site.
The stations control room, relaying shortwave from Korea, the Vatican, China, Japan, and many many other places.
The transmitters had a cooling system that used water next to 250kW of electricity, so it was very important to keep the place dry, and of course dust free. Some of their worst issues were with their outdoors lines freezing over during ice storms changing the circumference of their lines, affecting the accuracy of their broadcasts.
Inside the matrix (below), smells like the CFAT lab times 100.
Another great FIELD moment, a real treat to get close to these huts that of course I can’t stop thinking about! Marcel mentioned the reason why they chose the particular location for station was not only the geographical location, but the fact that the Tantramar Marsh is a salt water marsh was more hospitable for broadcasting. He also warned at being too close to some of the live wires could actually microwave a person, and that because they had to keep the grass short year round to access the potentially frozen wires, they were a full service restaurant for bald eagles, crows and birds feasting on decapitated field mice.
As the electronics residency at CFAT winds down, construction season begins soon in the backyard. In the mean time, I have been drafting plans and researching construction methods for gazeebo’s and transferring them to the smaller, more portable light-weight structures.
The proposed installation for both Nocturne:Art at Night (Halifax, hosted by the Centre For Art Tapes) and Art In The Open (Charlottetown, hosted by the Confederation Centre For The Arts) titled FIELD are both right around the corner, so a fair amount of planning and concept development and refinement has been in order lately.
The overall formation of the stations scattered throughout an open space will resemble that of the popular CQ Field Day or Contesting[1] while the structures themselves will resemble early-mid 20th century military silos. The overall aesthetical outcome of FIELD intentionally fuses these subjects together to consider the spectrum of roles that shortwave radio technology has played in Canadian history. This rich history extends back to Canada’s involvement with the Spanish Civil War[2], throughout the Cold War and into modern use of the technology for search and rescue, nautical, aviation, and military operations throughout the world. The transferring of this contextualization from defense mechanism, into an artistic means of storytelling is carefully balanced between the site-specificity of a military base, and intergenerational passing of folklore and practical knowledge of this specific medium.
[1] Contesting (also known as radiosport) is a competitive activity pursued by amateur radio operators. In a contest, an amateur radio station, which may be operated by an individual or a team, seeks to contact as many other amateur radio stations as possible in a given period of time and exchange information.
[2] A literary example of this is Ted Allan’s Spanish Civil War novel, This Time a Better Earth (Stratford Press Inc., 1939).
DEW Line Project: Image taken by Berton Cosman.
There has been quite a bit of drafting,planning and research at the same time, including a visit soon to the CRI towers near Aulac (Between Sackville and Amherst), which is on the chopping block due to federal cuts to CBC. I am looking forward to a day trip tomorrow to the CRI station in Aulac for a tour with my grandfather and artist/friend Daniel Espeset. Very very much looking forward to it, but also reflecting on the importance to retain the physical and material, as well as the storytelling and ambiance around these iconic and historical structures.
So a good night sleep is the best thing now for the busy day tomorrow!
I was able to spend about an hour or so with my grandfather, talking about his experiences with Shortwave Radio, going through old magazines and hundreds pf address cards from other SW radio users.
Many of the technical aspects of building a SW radio in the same way as he did are still well beyond my skill set. Nonetheless, the dialogue we had on sharing some of these stories was priceless, and well worth the trip. My grandfather has been an enthusiast for radio technology since pretty much his entire life. Stumbling across some equipment of his uncles on the family farm on the Kingston Peninsula when he was a young teenager, he began his first experimentations with SW radios from this early age. Shortly afterwards, the farmhouse had a fire, burning down pretty much anything the farm had to function, so the family moved to St. John, where they opened up a hardware store. My grandfather worked there, and eventually went to UNB in Fredericton, where he became a member of their campus SW Radio Club. One of his main projects during his engineering degree was to develop what they called a Teletype machine, designed to receive a message from one typewriter to another through radio, allowing the typewriters to simultaneously type the same thing at the same time.
As rudimentary as these mechanisms may seem to us now, this was something that was fairly ground-breaking for this time, and brought us to the very different, yet similar technologies that we use today. These earlier mechanical and radio devices shared very similar social and political tendencies that we see in conflict around internet authority and access to public and private communications streams. My grandfather pointed out the importance of SW Radio hobbyists had on development of long-range communications and their role of paving the way for commercialization of frequency waves. Government regulation and designation of radio waves to various usages came soon after electronics hobbyists and enthusiasts played such a crucial role in the development of radio for public access, and laid the groundwork for educate and legal guidelines for radio and subsequently the entire communications industry.
My Grandfather’s first shortwave transmitter.
I was long overdue for a visit with my grandfather who lives just next to the Kennebecasis River , where hundreds of Ice fishing shacks migrate every winter in what is probably Atlantic Canada’s larding Ice Fishing Community. This may seem off topic to this project, but I can’t help but be mesmerized by these temporary communities that much like the DEW Line project, depend directly on harsh, frozen conditions to make it possible to build their communities upon.
I had heard from my grandmother that many of the shacks were gone for the year, but luckily the 4 hour drive up with Ruby, Mom and Yolanda got us there just in time to see three still up on the ice!
The dozen or so shacks that were up on shore offered the opportunity to take a closer look at the rough construction details of some of these rigs, which are mostly made up of scrap materials and anything that can help one stay warm sitting on your ass in minus 30 for hours.
There were still a few die hards out there sitting on the ice where their shacks used to be, catching smelt. My grandfather described that a few nights ago he came across a ‘big mess’ of smelt tied in a sobeys bag to his doorknob that his friend had left after a good day on the ice.
The formation of the few shacks that were left on the ice were descriptive enough for my research. Each shack unique, with various patch jobs and particularities to fit the likes of its owner, they are each a sort of character sketch of who built them.
Thinking of the usual hundreds of these out there on the ice peaked my curiosity that this particular style of fishing is so stationary, harbouring a cluster community, while so much iof it at the same time seems to strive to be ‘away from it all’. This for some reason so closely resembles that of radio enthusiasts and nowadays social media groups in that we are alone and together at the same time, collecting information, moving together, sourcing and interacting through a collective media that binds us together as a community.
Just finished FM Transmitter #1 from the Ramsey Electronics Kit – works like a charm! Looking forward to another day of soldering tomorrow. Lots more posts to come, for now its bed time!
The past week has been a productive one in terms of finalizing ideas, ordering parts that are needed and bringing together conceit with practical building of radio parts. I have decided to move towards constructing FM radio transmitters for the most part at this point as with my limited budget and time it is a bit easier to access. It is also an easier medium for most people to approach and that most people still have access to. When thinking of the final presentation of this project, it makes sense to use FM instead of SW for this reason.
There are two useful pieces of literature that I have come across for any beginners like myself who may be interested in trying this out. They are both not something that you would find at chapters, but are pretty simple introductions to anyone who would like to try this for the first time, or would liketo teach this to a class or a group of friends.
1) ROAR: The Paper Tiger Television Guide to Media Activism
Paper Tiger is a wonderful group of folks from New York City who I met at the New York Art Book Fair in 2009. Their approach to utilizing community cable and other media as activism and as a viable source of communication tools to anyone and everyone interested is fantastic. Their support for a democratic and accessible media outlet is fantastic. I really want them to come to Halifax! There is a small chapter in this book by Xav Leplae on creating your own radio station. It is nice and simple!
This is also a great intro to building your own FM transmitter put together by Lotte Meijer. I haven’t actually put this one together yet, but ordered a few parts that are on their way! There is a lot of information about this particular kit online, and the great thing about it is it is super cheap to put together. There are some You Tube videos online with pretty good instructions on this as well. Mostly this manual will come with a kit, but it is also designed so you can easily find your own materials.
Put together a Telephone FM transmitter from a kit today at the lab while listening to Seaside FM. So much to say about that but I’m pretty exhausted after a busy day. It felt great though to be working on something that is not digital. So I will keep it that way and sign out for the night and leave you with a few pics.
I thought a lot today about ice fishing on the Kennebecasis River , which I’ve never been, but always really appreciated from a distance! The fishing shacks resemble that of the DEW line in their temporary ‘easy come easy go’ functionality, and speak in many common circles to that of shortwave and HAM radio users. I think I enjoy the individuality of each ice fishing shack as a signature of it’s inhabitant equally as much as the uniform utilitarian nature of the DEW line architecture. Both have a simplicity amongst their demeanour that speaks to the harsh landscape that they are amongst.
I also picked up a small speaker from someone on kijiji today that may be fun to work with.
Thanks kijiji!
Confirming what I said earlier about the generous spirit of people working with Shortwave, I found myself packing my trunk with mounds of free shortwave equipment just two days after posting on kijiji ”artist looking for shortwave and CB radio parts”. A very kind and generous man by the name of Russell offered up some great equipment, much of which I have yet to learn about, and some advice and leads on all kinds of radio.
Russell offered much of his excess parts in the name of passing on and sharing of knowledge of independent and amateur radio. His place in West Dover was one of just a few dozen homes in the community, many of which were for sale. This is something that is a common site in rural NS. As the rental and property prices in urban centers like Halifax continue to rise and people move to the city, public resources and infrastructure continue to dwindle in communities populated mostly by folks over 50 (with their children working thousands of km’s away out west). It is a story that we have all heard so many times, and radio, as well as many other pastimes, is a very real connector to these communities, so it has never been more important to have access to radio broadcasting for so many great reasons.
It was a beautiful spring-like January day out there today, and as Russ and I rummaged through the piles and piles of radio equipment in his shed, Yolanda and Ruby played outside with the pipes and fiberglass water basins, and materials in his yard. The generosity that Russ so kindly offered us today was exactly what I needed at this time, cause to be honest, learning this new medium for me has become quite a humbling (yet very exciting) experience!
I am now looking forward to getting back to the lab and testing out these new parts. What I have shown here is just a bit of what I was given today. Although this experience was very motivating and certainly was a boost in what I have to work with, I still believe that for the purpose of this project, I may have to look into other radio options such as FM or CB transceivers. Both of these would be closer to what I could put together and afford in materials to complete this project. The need for a more permanent studio is starting to become more real as well, which I think is probably a good thing in terms of becoming an artist again, but nonetheless daunting with so many financial restrictions already. Thanks so much Russell for all of your assistance today!
Possibly this comes from a bias of working FT and a half in Arts Administration over the past few years, but beyond this, I have noticed that my work as an artist has often gravitated towards communications-based practices and media. Perhaps this in my nature to begin with, but it’s almost as if I have slipped into it subconsciously. I understand that arguably all media is a communication device, what I am talking about here is the more direct forms such as radio, printed matter, video and performance.
A few years ago I participated in a conference in Regina, SK called Open Engagement: Art After Aesthetic Distance. This was a conference on socially engaged art practices as its foundation and incorporated elements including workshops, exhibitions, residencies, pedagogy, curatorial practice and collaboration. At the exact same time, there was a conference in Vancouver being held called Live in Public: The Art of Engagement, ‘artists working in the public realm and engaging communities within their art practices’. Both of these conferences addressed topics of relational art practices, or ‘relational aesthetics’ asking questions on the social role responsibilities of the artist the impact of our connections with the broader community.
Open Engagement: http://jendelosreyes.com/openengagement/about.html
The Art of Engagement: http://www.grunt.ca/engage/
While talking to a friend of mine who was attending the conference in Vancouver, we were both intrigued not so much by the parallel themes between the two of these as we were both aware that in this world where we share so many aesthetic qualities with one another universally, our physical relationship with these qualities and how we respond to them is often synchronized. Many of these aesthetics and value judgements within the art world, and especially within artists educated in Canada can be surprisingly similar. Anyone working as an artist here for more than a few years knows that and soon recognizes work that comes from a particular school, institution, or mentor that we are familiar with. To the point though, the many similarities of these two conferences did not surprise us as I think we would both agree that we do not believe so much in the coincidence of the situation as we have become so accustomed to familiar schools of thought being presented in multiple places at once.
It did come to surprise to us both though the difference in age groups invited to these two very similar themed conferences. Almost exclusively, the conference in Regina consisted of participants under 35 and the opposite goes for the one in Vancouver. This spoke to us both that there were distinctly two communities of artists in this small country operating within their means on a very similar subject matter. Nothing at all against either conference, mostly what I am saying is that it struck us that there is still (probably unintentional) segregation between generations even within a very small and like-minded political and conceptual theme. This segregation was noticed moreso amongst a medium that itself selves a purpose to explore social boundaries and their implications our role as artists communicating to the public.
I think this is really what I find attractive about working with communications based media, is the people working with it have a sense of generosity in their distribution of information that seems to flow second nature to them. When applying academic and formal conceptual practices to practical communications media, there is an intersection between two very different schools of thought that bring together so many possibilities. There is also an important inter-generational relationship and mentorship that of course depends so closely on their media being used to continue their work. This is the intersection that I would like to stop and observe for a while, and maybe find myself talking to someone and learning about how it all works. There are plenty of delegates around these days, and here I am blogging instead of soldering because it’s what I know how to do. I look forward to doing and listening for a while.
