Dr. Klangendum

Radia 179: Orange = happiness, enthusiasm, dignity, prosperity.

Orange = happiness, enthusiasm, dignity, prosperity. This is the colour that radiates optimism, stimulates activity, appetite, and encourages socialization. In the search of other symbolic meanings of the orange colour , I realised that the black box is in fact orange. Hence, this concept is directly taken from the aeronautical use of the device that commonly is known as a black box, which records the audio environment within the flight deck of an aircraft and it is only used for the purpose of investigating an airplane accident. Here the black box replica has the same purpose, only it is used in a different context. Positioned in jardinière in the city square Macedonia, it recorded the sounds from its immediate vicinity. Noise, rustle, sounds of footsteps, words, conversations, thoughts… Those are the sounds that should be read as signs when posing the questions and giving the answers regarding the “fall” of a society and its lost values, as well as perceiving the human role in that process. This piece does not play on the presumption that this society has already fallen, but uses its means for observation of the society in order to detect its state.
NOVEMBER 8TH 2007 
SKOPJE, REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
CITY SQUARE MACEDONIA
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The black box was positioned and initialized on November 1st 2007 at 13:44:25h. On November 8th at 16:35:16 it was switched off. This transcript represents the last 31 minutes before its switching off.radia.

Radia 180: Imagination Unlimited – The Leicester Tape Recording Club by Mark Vernon.

The past is often said to be a foreign country. This programme features audio postcards from some of the inhabitants. The Leicester Tape Recording Club was a club for tape recording enthusiasts active in the sixties and seventies. Like a latter day Mass Observation, amateur radio producers and documentary makers sometimes unintentionally captured the minutiae of a now surreal suburbia. A forgotten world of bri-nylon, briar pipes and tank-tops met an arcane society who spoke of tape-speeds and soldering irons. ‘Imagination Unlimited’ takes a nostalgic and humorous look at the club and its members. Ex-members memories wow and flutter like their disintegrating reel-to-reel recordings. This is a story not just of a club but a community, a community of hobbyists, amateurs and charming personalities who captured otherwise long extinct phenomena like ‘The Golden Wonder Boy’. Memories are made of hiss…