Radio.

Here in the UK we have so much choice on traditional radio (FM MW LW and Dab). Most of the time that choice gives us a ‘product’ that is banal, crass, based on a system of infantilism and musically dull. Not art.
But the ‘digital revolution’ give us choice. Gives art.

I’m currently listening to ‘DFM Radio Television‘ which plays alternative and challenging music with no adverts and no DJ’s and no trailers and no links. I strongly recommend this station to set your mind/ear/heart free….

Is this not the beginnings of a real revolution in media!?

Here is my guide to getting started on internet radio in your home….
1. You can listen either via a dedicated internet radio or using a computer. I looked at all the available radios in the UK and finally decided to use my laptop hooked up to Apple’s AirPort Express which allowed me to pipe the audio arriving at my laptop to anywhere in my house and had a much bigger interface (my screen) than any of the radios. (It also cost me no extra money!)
2. You need a way of searching for stations. I-tunes does this but it’s not really up to the job in my opinion. Best is to purchase either Snowtape or Radioshift. This is very important because it’s difficult to search and navigate the huge number of stations out there. These applications allow you to find stations that match and challenge your taste, and that really is the point. Both are for Mac- I’m sure there are more for PC.
3. Getting stations into the applications can be a little arcane- sometimes you can go to the stations website and click on ‘listen’ and this will open a url in the radio application- but not always. Sometimes it’s a matter of copy and paste or importing.

Postscript: “All technologies have embedded within them their own assumptions about time and space.”

The echo across the valley that today is a mere amusement must have been something far more exciting and challenging to our ancestors- for it was the only possible way any human could have had of hearing his or her own voice!
“I don’t like the sound of my own voice”. Today this is a typical reaction on hearing a recording of one’s own voice for the first time. But what if we only had the option of hearing our own voice by means of an echoing valley? Would it be a matter for vanity then?

What is more, today, via recording, we can have the amazing experience of hearing our own voice backwards. What does that mean- backwards? How is that represented in the vibrations in the air?

When we look in a mirror we do not see our true image -it is reversed. But we can hear our own true voice from the valley. Technology can fix and distort these representations.

How sad the story of Echo and Narcissus. Echo, the chattering nymph who had been punished by the God Juno so that she could only speak that which was spoken to her, fell desperately in love with Narcissus. But Narcissus rejected Echo who subsequently died of grief.
The Gods punished Narcissus by making him know what it would feel like to fall in love with one who will never love back. Narcissus saw his own image in the water and immediately fell in love with it. He reached out to touch his love and of course it disappeared. He too eventually died of grief.

Marshall McLuhan challenged this interpretation of the story, saying Narcissus fell in love not with himself, but in fact mistook the image for another.
In the “The Gadget Lover” McLuhan notes precisely why the Greek myth of Narcissus is of such importance to our gadget frenziness today:

“The youth Narcissus (narcissus means narcosis or numbing) mistook his own reflection in the water for another person. This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image…. He was numb. He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system.
Now the point of this myth is the fact that men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any material other than themselves.”

I have been reading McLuhan recently for the first time. A brilliant intellect and creative mind that leaves me with a sense of understanding about what it means to be at this point in history.

I finish with a song: