a little drive past Hamtramck on I-75 will reveal such a treat
(by Cotton Museum) if tuned to 107.9 FM .......
"PIONEERS",
a commisioned
piece for the 'Shrinking
Cities' exhibition, co-hosted by MOCAD
and CAM,
is a radio-based driving tour of Detroit featuring 12 mini-programs continually
broadcast at 107.9 FM from short-range transmitters in 12 different locations
.... please continue reading, then download the map and tour info, and by all
means .. TAKE THE TOUR! ...
and listen in to the histories, goals, hopes, strategies, audio clips, or musings
of folks committed to their neighborhoods, their communities, their city, and
their craft!
(( other pioneers samples - tastysoil
- new york designer upholstery & trim
- gruchala - mckinney
- jack pine - and stay tuned for
the box set! ))
a transmitter installed high in one of the participants' homes (left), and the
intended reciever (right) for the tour .. your car radio!
pioneers project map drawing, X marks the spot for the transmitters around town
matt and hazel blake (left), and christopher majors of new york
designer upholstery and trim (right)
john gruchala, urban farmer and community activist (left), and the transmitter
with the 'jack pine / figure 8 racing' program (right)
a hand-painted produce sign (left) and the detroit bros sign
(right)
john george of the motor city blight busters (left), and another one of the
installed tour transmitters (right)
a few of the tasty soil mascots (left), and james and dave of
detroit bros (right)
chris pottinger of tastysoil.com and cotton museum
gayelynn mckinney, incredible drummer and percussionist (left), and the
storefront for the greening of detroit (right)
the new york designer upholstery & trim headquarters on mcnichols (left),
and the installation at mocad for shrinking cities exhibit (right)
.....
the series of 12 short programs for continual broadcast were
collaboratively produced with 12
different folks from 12 different sites to try to provide a glimpse into a few
of the D's
industrious hearts and minds! DIY tourism? multi-part documentary? sonic group
portrait? public intervention? radio art? go listen and decide for yourself!
here's a map and tour info ... what are you waiting for!? please check back
for tour info updates
detroit!
'PIONEERS'
107.9 FM
radio based driving tour .... 12 part multi-site documentary
tune your radios to 107.9 fm
each transmitter has a 400 foot range
please
be respectful of the tour participants!
watch for pedestrians!
be careful driving and pay attention!
if you get lost or deviate from the tour .... enjoy yourself!!
1.
gayelynn mckinney - www.gayelynnmckinney.com
program - a woman drummer's experience / straight ahead / drum solos
location - mt vernon @ john r, detroit
2.
christopher majors - new
york designer upholstery & trim headquarters & www.nydcycles.com
program - thinking large / starting small / custom car upholstery / more!
location - new
york designer upholstery & trim
8450 w mcnichols
across from mary grove college, detroit
3.
joel peterson - www.myspace.com/bohemiannationalhome
program - artist run spaces / show preparations / performance gallery
location - bohemian national home
3009 tillman, off michigan ave, detroit
4.
lauren rossi & derek reitzel - www.cartooncreaper.deviantart.com
program - tattoos / inks / friends / machine art
location - 230 grand river, above coach's corner
between centre and broadway, detroit
5.
john george - www.blightbusters.org
program - blight busters / community based networks
location - blight busters community center
17405 lahser, between 6 & 7 mile, detroit
6.
chris pottinger - www.tastysoil.com
program - original sound piece for broadcast / sound artist
location - 11503 st aubin @ casmere
close to the service drive @ I-75, hamtramck
7.
detroit brothers - www.detroitbros.com
program - ghetto future / custom motorcycles / aesthetics
location - 23510 woodward ave
n of 9 mile, across from wetmore's, ferndale
8.
ashley atkinson - www.greeningofdetroit.org & www.detroitagriculture.org
program - community movement / sustainable open space programming
location - 1418 michigan ave
1/2 block from old tiger stadium, detroit
9.
jack pine - www.slanny.org
program - figure 8 races / muscle cars & parts / hemi
location - 2101 e 11 mile @ edgeworth,
close to I-75, royal oak
10.
matt and hazel blake -
program - hexane / house party / home tour /
location - 1015 vinewood @ lafayette,
just north of the yorba, detroit
11.
chazz miller - www.publicartworkz.tripod.com - email chazz and get involved
- creativeefx@yahoo.com
program - public art workz / detroit mural project / get involved!
location - 17340 Lahser
just south of the old redford theater
12.
john gruchala - email him to get involved! jsgbase@aol.com
program - community efforts / activism / urban farmer
location - 17500 john r @ east parkhurst
the radio in my rental car - great for testing transmitters!
the install setup ..... looping custom 'mocad' soundtrack with
voice-over capability via live mic through xmitter (above) broadcasting to the
parking lot and also the radio on shelf adjacent to the tour maps .... museum
visitors at mocad and cranbrook both experience this live mic xmitter setup
with maps
.....
'PIONEERS'
- DETROIT - 107.9 FM
a radio-based audio
driving tour of some of the less populated areas in and around urban and suburban
Detroit. The project will explore
these areas as well as the lives and neighborhoods in between, specifically
focusing on cottage industry and various histories and hopes of Detroit's new
pioneers (the ones that didn't move away). What does it take to stay in a city
like Detroit? How does one survive, or better yet, prosper? Come out and listen
in!
call me for a special driving tour of the broadcast sites around town! or come
out to MOCAD for my talk on Feb 4 ...
glam, and
garbage .... 'talking homes' will explore things in between
There's never much middle ground in the portrayal of the city ... which Detroit
have you visited? The glamorous one? Or the one filled with garbage? Or maybe
the less-familiar residential areas within the city? Or perhaps the re-greening
urban wilderness!?
left - a map of the re-greening of Detroit and right - a wild pheasant! 'talking
homes' will explore these areas as well as the lives and neighborhoods in between,
specifically focusing on cottage industry and various histories and hopes of
Detroit's new pioneers
an example of a 'talking
property' transmitter bundle with headset, microphone, power supply, and typical
sign to alert people to 'tune in' for info about a property, ... i'll be doing
the project as a way of pointing to all of the activities surrounding or typically
contained or structured by houses, architecture, objects, and infrastructures,
20 or so transmitter units will be positioned along specific routes to be experienced
by slow moving listeners with an FM radio
...
BLAH!! general writing on the project !! part of my initial proposal package
for the detroit project ....
'Talking Homes'
Overview:
Proposed as an offsite portion of
the upcoming 'Shrinking Cities' exhibition opening February 2007 in the Detroit
Contemporary Museum, 'Talking Homes' is a site-specific public audio tour of
select areas of downtown Detroit featuring personal stories, historical anecdotes,
field recordings, and special messages by local inhabitants and business owners
specifically designed for audio tour visitors and listeners. The project will
explore and address community-specific and Detroit-specific concerns and interests
and broadcast short looping audio segments, produced in collaboration with local
individuals and communities, using legal FCC approved low-power FM transmitters.
Goals:
1. To create and exhibit a hybrid
and dynamic socio-cultural instrument based on personal reportage from within
an economically depressed community designed to to instigate discussion among
a variety of listener types and challenge their presumptions and perceptions
of what they see before them while engaged with the 'audio tour'
2. To work with local inhabitants,
workers, and others to collaboratively build an experimental public radio archive
of local events and phenomena to be experienced only in direct relationship
to specific geographies or sites
3. To boost tourism within an economically
depressed area, to challenge our ideas and notions of tourism, and to explore
the relationship of tourism to manufacturing in terms of the changing economic
structures within the US as represented by urban Detroit
4. To get people physically moving
around the lesser known partially- to very- abandoned residential areas through
a designed intervention wherein community members become an integral part of
an art experience otherwise isolated within a 'cultural institution'
5. To implement a designed counter-proposal
or hyper-local media alternative to global media and marketing, internet radio,
internet streaming, and video or audio blogging which, although proven to be
capable of building communities based on shared interests and motivations, end
up having very little relationship with sites of reportage or the 'real' communities
represented within new 'virtual' community forums
Implementation:
Small range transmitters with looping
messages will be placed in specific sites - pending discussions and negotiations
between the artist and homeowners, business owners, their friends, relatives,
etc - and will operate continuously after installation and made accessible and
available for public listening through maps and other related publications including
the broadcast frequency and suggested routes. All transmitter units will be
tuned to the same available frequency so that when passing from site to site
the sounds will fade into and out of each other require no adjustment of controls
or tuning of one's radio. The transmission units, which are FCC approved and
licensed and require no special permits, registration, or operation fees, are
fully tunable so as to take advantage of unused or available frequencies depending
on their location.
...
My main goal for the project is to
encourage people living and working in Detroit, visitors to the 'Shrinking Cities'
exhibition, and other visitors from outside of the area to visit and spend a
little time in downtown Detroit driving or riding around listening to a series
of hyper-local radio broadcasts, exploring the stories behind the scenery before
them. My hope is that people will participate in this unique public radio-art
experience and ultimately become more familiar with the city's current conditions,
its inhabitants, its workers, and some of their thoughts and opinions on their
environment, local or national politics, popular culture, or simply the day's
failures or successes.
Placing listeners in a position to clearly identify the things they see before
them and to seek relationships between these visuals and the corresponding audio
for each site, I would further hope participants and visitors would leave the
audio tours relating to and recognizing the stories and sounds they heard, the
sights they saw, and although recognizing and reflecting on the vitality of
the city's inhabitants, workers, and wildlife, be left with the need to ponder
the disconnects and question the relationships between aural and visual information,
activities and sites, histories and futures, absence and presence.
A vacant lot might sound like a conversation between an older woman and a little
girl reporting her newest dream, burned cars could sound like a family of wild
pheasants building a nest, or a thriving business might sound like a train wreck
from 1944 mixed with sounds of the owner chasing outside after someone forgetting
their snacks.
My secondary goal is to have the audio tour considered as a dynamic hybrid instrument,
one that fuses personal conversations and negotiations, storytelling, experimental
radio, creative resistance, tactical media, sales and customarily autonomous
car-culture in an effort to explore and reflect on relationships, commerce,
community activities, and the blending of public and private spaces within a
city charged with historical tensions, unprecedented population loss, and a
steadily diminishing infrastructure. By capturing stories and sounds of people
and things persisting in such a place, and transforming them into endlessly
looping and floating radio waves, the city itself becomes a medium, a transmitter,
a receiver. And through a series of very personal negotiations to use private
property for public broadcasts, the transmitters become emblematic of a type
of utopian vision wherein people, technology, communication, mobility, and empowerment
- if only by way of showing up to take interest in others - are all necessary
components for both survival and prosperity.
....
.......... alternate Overview (excerpted from letters to a very friendly
'Talking Property' transmitter rep) ..........
Apart from the fact that I'll be
using a kind of 'sales device' for a free community-based experience for the
public at large (as long as they can get access to a radio), the general scenario
for my project is three-fold: 1. get people to tell me stories about their
lives at home, events of note in their neighborhood, or special offers for or
requests of the audio tour visitors and passersby 2. negotiate with renters,
homeowners, landowners and such to let me place the talking house transmitters
in their homes / yards / shops / garages / etc so that passersby can tune in
and get a small glimpse of the life behind the architecture / infrastructure
or newly 'green' space in front of them during the tour and 3. set up
walking / biking / driving audio tours via hyper-local radio of an entire neighborhood
or region so that with all of the transmitters tuned to the same frequency one
could experience a kind of 'drive through audio collage' where one story fades
into the next and into the next as well.
The project serves as a kind of utopian
alternative to industrial tourism to be held in comparison or dialog with the
concurrent decline in manufacturing and rise in industrial tourism within the
US. Additionally, with regards to the growing popularity and significance of
the global 'biennial' circuits and their impact on or relationship to communities
consciously or inadvertently hosting such events, the 'Talking Homes' project
offers a type of 'site-specific' or 'site-based' project designed specifically
to be in dialog not only with the surrounding community of an art institution
but also with other 'site-specific' and 'site-based' projects done by a new
breed of international artists whose studio is newly situated in the middle
of industrial tourism and within the confines of negotiating largely with institutions
and corporations.
The 'Talking Homes' project for Detroit
will inevitably address the steady population loss, community collapse, and
decline in manufacturing occuring in Detroit since the late 60's/ early 70's.
By situating the 'audio tour / drive-through sound collage' scenario in some
of the most abandoned and neglected neighborhoods there, hopefully to include
neighborhoods with the growing populations of wild pheasants and such, audio
tour visitors and listeners will be confronted with a very clear cut example,
although seemingly or visually without origin, of the possible repercussioins
of a single-industry economy, industrial monoculture, bad civic planning, or
the inevitable collapse of an industry necessitating and requiring the use and
availability of non-renewable fossil fuels. Even though there are so few houses
in some areas there, there is still electricity or sunlight to power the units.
....
conspiracy theory, oil dependency, making eye contact with homeless people,
the second-coming, corporate media, imperialism, the apocalypse, armageddon,
global warming, collaboration, utopian desires, communication, localized media,
hyper-local organization, alternative economics, conceptual art, public sculpture,
information age, good neighbor toothpicks, fun, german cultural foundation,
population loss, infrastructure loss, art as a means to counter the de-funding
of education and possible empowerment of regular and varied folk, collectivism,
why are you reading this!? go meet your neighbor! go out and tune in / see if
there's a pirate radio station near you!
......
thanks for sticking
around!
and up next ....
LAKE
MERRITT LOOPS
MAY & JUNE 2007
87.9 FM
postcard link above - fun!
logo links below - fun!
and ... coming soon ... the
BAD NEIGHBOR BOX SET
(audio cd with photo booklet,
from talking homes phase 1)
(click to listen to GRASS, 1 of 14 in the series)
and next year ... look for
the
SOUTH BAY TALENT CENTER
(my San Jose Public Arts Commission Award project)
© 2007 jon brumit -
contact for terms of
use