Broadcast Translation:
SL Morse - at (npr) Neighborhood Public Radio’s “Day of Deceit” - at Southern Exposure - at 25th and Mission Streets, San Francisco. (4/14/07)

Instead of a ‘day of deceit,’ I tuned in for just one show. Tuned in, in person. Inside, the audience has a seat of four chairs and possibly a low window ledge in front of monitors. Outside the audience includes whom-so-ever passes by and stops to get past the reflection in the storefront windows and suddenly see the setup of radio gear and musical instruments that is behind the crackling sound emanating from the doorway. The sound cast out onto the sidewalk competes today with both a fierce wind that undercuts the sunny strolling on Mission Street, and the braking clatter of the very frequent buses stopping on the corner. Altogether, outside, the sounds are an unintelligible mash of rushes and pops that inside the gallery are a vivid percussion event.

Blocks away from Southern Exposure / the temporary Neighborhood Public Radio headquarters, I turned on my radio and waved it around in the air as I walked towards the venue. When would the station come in? Or rather, where? The audience for a radio broadcast is wherever the radio frequency and the radio receiver meet up. My radio, I learned to my dismay had a really bad tuner. I couldn’t find the station even while standing in front of the doorway. Whereas later, traveling around in the sanctity bubble of the car – hills away even in Noe Valley, I picked up the monotone reflections of a German immigrant to the Mission on a very clear npr.

A little research via npr’s own website reveals that the roving low power radio station that intermittently inhabits 88.9 started broadcasting in 2006 at 21 Grand in Oakland. This year, npr has been radio mapping the Mission District through their residency at Southern Exposure, whose new digs took over an old flower shop on 25th and Mission. Part opportunistic local event journalism, part local event maker, npr’s on-going actions use the radio waves to explore combinations of public dialog, everyday intervention, and the potential of non-physical community space made by layers of technology in tangible space. The link between the radio frequency broadcast and the internet broadcast isn’t articulated and although expands the potential listener base, dilutes the potential impact of the exploration in technology/range/and community.

The concert for the radio at 4 p.m. was ‘SL Morse’ as performed by Sarah Lockhart and Suki O’Kane. The program notes advise that Lockhart has developed a music notation relationship between percussion and morse code. This a very deceitful ring of communication indeed. Code for language trans-‘literated’ into musical notation and re-broadcast as language disguised as music. The two percussionists tap and slam out truncated beats and cymbal washes. The distinction between translation and interpretation is unclear. There is a third unnamed/unacknowledged player that represents this free-jazz as text through the proto electronic voice (recognizable as the type that announces weather disasters over government channels). The ‘voice’ is translating both codes into the English language intelligible. Because of the percussion delay with the text, the ‘voice’ only surfaces at droning intervals. Together, the repetitive percussion and the voice notes are an incomplete story in competition. The mixed intentions of scavenging notation sources for unheard of ways of communicating music, and the political nature of the text source are valiant but at odds. Through all of the interferences, however, the convergence of SL Morse’s notation translation project and npr’s broadcast project make a provocative entry in questioning the sound of textual communication through the overlay of multiple mediums.