Mezcal Radio Workshop: Transmission and Sound Art

Use your mobile phone to create an interactive radio station! A new kind of radio that is cheap and quick and easy. In this workshop, learn to use the interactive audio software app Mezcal, created by artist, designer and engineer August Black.

What is Mezcal?

August describes it thus: "Mezcal is a novel telematic service that allows multiple constituents to fluidly participate in broadcast-like scenarios through their mobile devices at the flick of their thumbs.... Listeners get an immediate way to call in and contribute. Producers can make shows by themselves, in collaboration with others, at remote locations or on-site, and/or in synchronous or asynchronous modes. Both listeners and producers can hop-on or off the stream at will. It all works in a browser, outside of app stores, and is a different kind of networked radio where the boundary between listener and producer can be strict or blurred.... I see Mezcal as an instrument for diverse practices in transmission and sound art, for providing alternative modes of point to point communication for social movements, and as a new technological form of environmental and journalistic reporting."

For this workshop, anyone of modest ability may apply as long as you can bring along your mobile device. Numbers are limited, hence holding another workshop later in the year. We shall spend the initial part of the workshop at 107 Redfern Street as we understand how to navigate the app and its potential uses. We shall then decide on a public space or an event that we would like to use as our audio subject matter. Then we'll complete the workshop by editing a fix-media piece from our actions and audio outcomes that will be streamed and transmitted via Wave Farm Radio NY and 107diffusion Redfern.

Facilitator Bio

Jon Panther is currently a Sydney based Sonic and Radio-artist. He resided for many years in the UK where he graduated from the London College of Communication with a BTech Cert in Sound Design and Music Technologies and an MA in Interactive Multimedia. After several years collaborating with various performers and musicians, Jon returned to Aoteoroa to complete his post graduate diploma in Music Studies specialising in Electroacoustic composition at Auckland University. He graduated (again) with a MMusA Distinction Composition focusing on Telematic, Transmission and Radio-arts, Victoria University Wellington NZ. Jon started recording and performing under the name Audiotopsy in 1999 in the UK, Japan and Brazil, He has had works broadcast, performed and presented in the USA, Italy, UK, Ireland, NZ and Australia and has produced and presented sonic arts and new music radio programmes on FM community radio in Australasia. He has had the pleasure of having various works featured by Metanast UK, The Sonic Arts Forum UK, Hearsay International Audio Arts Festival Ireland, Helicotrema Italy and Jeu de temps/Times Play (JTTP) Cache Canada to name but a few! Jon is currently absorbed in his online streaming and narrowcast FM project DiffusionFM exploring generative composition systems for the medium of transmission. He, with DiffusionFM, is the Australian member for the Radio-arts network RADIA and has the honour of curating and producing content by local artists for international transmission.