Re-Imagined Radio

Features and Affordances

Andrew Dubber, describes "affordances" as opportunities within media spaces available for an actor within that space (Dubber 26). Of affordances, Dubber notes they are not static. In fact they change as the media environment changes. This is especially true nowdays, as the various parts of radio are changed by digital technologies and/or their digitization.

Radio Parts

What are the parts of radio? Richard Hand and Mary Traynor note the "constituent parts" of radio drama as Words, Sounds, Music, and Silence. In combination, or separately, these parts create sound-based narratives for listening audiences (Hand and Traynor 40).

Radio Ecology

Every episode of Re-Imagined Radio strives to best utilize Hand and Traynor's constituent parts. But, we're also inspired by Andrew Duber's concept of radio as a mashup of definitions, practices, communities, and artifacts.

"Radio need not necessarily mean a particular type of audio content consisting of some combination of speech, music and sound effects, coming from a particular type of device," Dubber says (Dubber 12).

Instead, "Radio is a cliche statement that assumes others know what we are talking about." Radio means different things to different people, Dubber says. For example, radio can be
An institution
A method of transmission and/or communication
A professional practice
Waves of the electromagnetic spectrum
A physical item in the kitchen, or automobile
A type of program to which one listens (Dubber 13)

For Dubber, "radio" is a complex interconnection of different but related practices and phenomena that can be understood from a range of perspectives, including management, creation, promotion, transmission, and reception.

Radio Medium

Dubber calls radio a category of media content with its own characteristics, conventions, and tropes. Radio is an institution. An organizational structure. A series of professional practices and relationships. And more.

As result, radio work, content, technologies, or cultures should not be considered as single subjects or processes, but rather, part of an "ecology," especially within the digital media environment in which radio is increasingly situated.

Dubber says the radio medium is a collection of different, but related, phenomena. It is a category of media content with its own characteristics, conventions, and tropes; an institution; an organizational structure; a series of professional practices and relationships; and more. As a result, radio work, content, technologies, or cultures should not be considered as single subjects or processes, but rather part of an ecology, especially within the digital media environment in which radio is increasingly situated (Dubber). Following Dubber's description, we believe the radio medium is capable of more than just commercialism. It is certainly creative. But more importantly, radio is capable of connecting sound(s) and listeners' imaginations.

More dramatically, Fred MacDonald says only in radio does "audial suggestion and imagination [conspire] to create illusion" (MacDonald 57).

Radio Making

Shawn VanCour also sees a radio ecology. But his is layered. Privileged inventors, executives, and policy makers at the top. Programming forms, practices, and styles at the bottom. In the middle are what he calls "professional sound workers" responsible for "making radio . . . developing content and techniques of practice that secured their medium's larger cultural identity" (VanCour 3).

Elaborating, VanCour says, "programmers, writers. directors, engineers, and on-air talent" during the 1920s, radio's formative decade, spawned "foundational studio technologies for radio broadcasting, including standard microphone setups and mixing methods for musical presentations; narrational strategies for radio drama; and performance styles for radio music, drama, and talk, all carefully tailored to the perceived demands of radio's aural mode of address and new instruments of electric sound reproduction" (VanCour 3-4).

The push by professional sound workers for "more conscious cultivation of the [radio] medium's aesthetic properties" helped generate and legitimate ideas of radiogénie, or radio genres (4). Programming strategies, "in response to the perceived demands and possibilities of radio presentation, also increased broader cultural investments in aural art making, while creating new forms of shared sonic experience that shaped expectations for neighboring sound media," like theatre, motion pictures, and later, television (4).

Multiple Groundings

Re-Imagined Radio sees itself a part of Dubber's radio ecology. Following Dubber's description, we believe the radio medium is capable of more than just commercialism. It is certainly creative. But more importantly, radio is capable of connecting sound(s) and listeners' imaginations. VanCour's production layer seems the right place for this. We want to experiment with and make radio stories of different types. For different purposes. And different audiences. Using Hand and Traynor's "constituent parts," Words, Sounds, Music, and Silence.

More dramatically, MacDonald says only in radio does "audial suggestion and imagination [conspire] to create illusion" (MacDonald 57). We think this connection also prompts emotion, interaction, participation, and immersion. Ways of making story worlds, and ways of being in them.

Who we are

Re-Imagined Radio is actors, artists, creators, curators, stewards, all interested in storytelling using the radio medium. We orginate in the local community, and reach out to international audiences.

What we do

Re-Imagined Radio combines features and affordances of literary practices with those of the digital radio space seeking to create and share stories that are compelling, engaging, immersive, and interactive.

We share our stories via broadcasting, podcasting, streaming, social media, YouTube, and sometimes, live performances. Our target is your imagination, where sound(s) evoke images far more illustrative of your experiences, thoughts, and dreams than any screen.

This approach, called research-as-practice, action research, and/or practice-based research, combines research and creative practice to promote systematic inquiry conducted via practical action in order to devise or test new information and communicate knowledge. Re-Imagined Radio believes that in the doing, in the making, new knowledge can be discovered and shared. Specific research questions include . . . How might we understand radio programs as forms of storytelling?
How might we re-imagine and re-present Radio Storytelling for contemporary audiences, sophisticated in their use of multiple forms of digital media?
How might re-imagined sound-based stories inform our understanding of embodied, shared experience of sound as capable, even desirable, for conveying storytelling?
How might these efforts inform best practices for creating engaging and immersive storytelling for the 21st century?

Re-Imagined Radio experiments with sound(s) as human expression, communication, and storytelling. We use literary (narrative, storytelling, listening, and imagination) and creative features of the radio medium to create shared listening experiences for contemporary audiences.

How we do it

Re-Imagined Radio begins with voice, music, and sound effects, drawing these fundamental elements from classic and contemporary dramas, comedies, aural and oral histories, documentaries, fictions, soundscapes, and radio art.

We curate the classics. Seek to create new legends. The desired result: listening and attention becomes more intentional. This intimacy amplifies the aesthetics of stories told with sound.

Why we do it

Re-Imagined Radio believes the radio medium can combine literary experiences, like writing, reading, speaking, and listening, with features and affordances of digital media art, like immersion, interaction, and engagement.

Re-Imagined Radio remixes sonic forms to experiment with what radio storytelling can mean as contemporary community expression. What we learn from our efforts helps understand how the radio medium can provide new opportunities for 21st Century digital, multimedia storytelling, inside your mind. Nothing to see. Everything to hear.