051: Twilight of the Idols

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On January 15, 2006, the Blind Spot radio program aired Twilight of the Idols, an experimental narrative that revolved around the CIA, the end of the world, Miami Vice fan-fiction, Nietzsche and Kelly Clarkson.

Featuring the voice talents of Anna Clark, Eric S. Humphrey, Peter Rosenbloom, and John Wanzel, engineered by Philip von Zweck, produced and written by Peter Rosenbloom and John Wanzel.

Blind Spot was founded in 2003 by Philip von Zweck and John Wanzel. In its two-year run on WLUW 88.7 Chicago, Blind Spot produced over 90 episodes of live experimental radio. The website for the program is old, incomplete and outdated. I am repackaging a few radio works from the 2000’s and re-releasing them on the podcast in hopes of reintroducing the work to a wider audience.

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049: Backyard in February

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Episode 49 of the podcast – a stereo recording of our backyard. Featuring several birds, the neighbor’s dog, the ever-present sounds of trains, planes and/or automobiles, beeping (why is there so much beeping), a light wind and a plumber bring a 100 foot snake into the basement to unclog our sewer pipe with noises of unclogging. The recording was made near one deciduous tree, and three evergreen trees, two living, one x-mas, next to the fence pictured above (a side note, our backyard is only about 400 square feet, so the placement was mostly to keep the mic away from the wind).

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047: A Walk to the Library

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A binaural recording of a walk from our house to the Mount Vernon Public Library. The library was a gift to the city from Andrew Carnegie and opened in 1904. It is located in downtown Mount Vernon, across from the Post Office and up the hill from the Mount Vernon East Metro North Station. I returned the second book in Rachel Bach’s Paradox trilogy, Honor’s Knight, and picked up Jonathan Franzen’s new book Purity. Space Opera for Literary Soap Opera. There is a little feedback in the recording from the headphones that are built into the binaural mics. It happens sometimes when the wind blows…

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045: Night of 3000 Balloons

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On January 9, 2005, the blind spot radio program filled the on-air studio with as many balloons as Eric, Jake and I could blow up (which happened to be 1,190) and then entered the room and popped them one at a time with a needle taped to a stick.

Conceived by Eric Humphrey and John Wanzel. Performed by Jake Quickel and Eric Humphrey, engineered and produced by John Wanzel.

This is the first time the complete recording of the program is available. I had hoped to fill the studio with 3,000 balloons, but my budget and the 2 hours we had to blow them up were the limiting factors.

I am repackaging a few radio works from the 2000’s and re-releasing them on the podcast.

 

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044: The Falls

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Episdoe 44: The Falls – A three hour composition for headphones.

In December 2008 my wife and I took a trip to Niagara Falls. This composition uses some of those recordings as its base. I processed them a lot. The only bit field recording that remains ‘clean’ is a short recording from inside the Niagara Falls Welcome Center. There are three other field recordings in the piece, one a microphone that I dangled down into a jetty on the gulf side of Florida, a short recording from a picnic area just off the beach, also in Florida, and the other sitting near the Horace Mann football field in the Bronx, I was resting after a long bike ride. Besides these brief respites, the piece is tones, grumbles, wa-wa’s, groans, beats and other sounds created through digital signal processing of Niagara Falls. The piece is made at a personal scale, three hours, a duration that is easy to imagine, but hard to hold onto. Ideally, The Falls is to be listened to while at work – doing tasks that you may not want to do or monotonous tasks you like. I would suggest gardening, raking leaves, doing dishes, painting a wall or changing light bulbs.

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