On Saturday, May 17th 1980, the day before they were to fly to America to begin their first US tour, Joy Division singer Ian Curtis visited his home in Macclesfield and watched the televised film Stroszek by his favorite director Werner Herzog. In America, Herzog shifts gears to a surreal road movie, ending with poor Bruno (sans Eva) adrift on a lonely ski slope, contrasted with Pavlovian dancing chickens.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio.
Radio is qua definitionem an ephemeral medium. It comes, it goes. It's always here at the moment but never stays. It refers to oral culture - language and tradition. Radio is a tribalistic mother technology that passes information onto its children - listeners, who will memorize some infos and forget others. You can't rewind if you missed the start of a transmission or didn't get the message. Paradoxically, Radio has become an increasingly less ephemeral medium ever since its pioneer days: You can record radio programmes on tape at home and thus insert the momentum of reliability and information retrieval. Even more important is the fact that radio is using recorded information and sound that is repeated over and over again in the cycles of heavy rotation. In this way, radio is serving the aims of an Pavlovian consumer society. A frozen flow.
Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's longtime manager, died Tuesday of complications from a stroke. He was eighty-seven. Before hooking up with the gravy train that was Elvis, the Colonel made a living working in carnivals and fairs, and was founder of the Great Parker Pony Circus and Colonel Tom Parker and His Dancing Chickens. For the latter, he would place live chickens on a hot plate covered with sawdust; the chickens then shook their legs and hopped about to avoid the heat.
"We Can't Stop the Dancing Chicken" is an audioplay with convex tv. and ethologist Richard Sparham - prepared for the speaker and the listener. A heap of software in tape format - throwing a forged coin into the circular feedback system of chicken radio. No chicken without no egg on life's loop - but which will be first? Dancing stored information, retrieving radio at loose ends.
As a radio-collective convex tv. loves the paradoxes of modern media technologies and tries to blend their contradictory features. On air convex tv. celebrates the vagueness of unique radio moments. On the internet these moments are transformed into files that are ready for retrieval: now, tomorrow or in decades. With its livestreams convex tv. finally tries to implement the volatility of tribal radio into the databased environment of the net - as well as into real social space.
On Saturday, May 17th 1980, the day before they were to fly to America to begin their first US tour, Joy Division singer Ian Curtis visited his home in Macclesfield and watched the televised film Stroszek by his favorite director Werner Herzog. In America, Herzog shifts gears to a surreal road movie, ending with poor Bruno (sans Eva) adrift on a lonely ski slope, contrasted with Pavlovian dancing chickens.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio.
Radio is qua definitionem an ephemeral medium. It comes, it goes. It's always here at the moment but never stays. It refers to oral culture - language and tradition. Radio is a tribalistic mother technology that passes information onto its children - listeners, who will memorize some infos and forget others. You can't rewind if you missed the start of a transmission or didn't get the message. Paradoxically, Radio has become an increasingly less ephemeral medium ever since its pioneer days: You can record radio programmes on tape at home and thus insert the momentum of reliability and information retrieval. Even more important is the fact that radio is using recorded information and sound that is repeated over and over again in the cycles of heavy rotation. In this way, radio is serving the aims of an Pavlovian consumer society. A frozen flow.
Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley's longtime manager, died Tuesday of complications from a stroke. He was eighty-seven. Before hooking up with the gravy train that was Elvis, the Colonel made a living working in carnivals and fairs, and was founder of the Great Parker Pony Circus and Colonel Tom Parker and His Dancing Chickens. For the latter, he would place live chickens on a hot plate covered with sawdust; the chickens then shook their legs and hopped about to avoid the heat.
"We Can't Stop the Dancing Chicken" is an audioplay with convex tv. and ethologist Richard Sparham - prepared for the speaker and the listener. A heap of software in tape format - throwing a forged coin into the circular feedback system of chicken radio. No chicken without no egg on life's loop - but which will be first? Dancing stored information, retrieving radio at loose ends.
As a radio-collective convex tv. loves the paradoxes of modern media technologies and tries to blend their contradictory features. On air convex tv. celebrates the vagueness of unique radio moments. On the internet these moments are transformed into files that are ready for retrieval: now, tomorrow or in decades. With its livestreams convex tv. finally tries to implement the volatility of tribal radio into the databased environment of the net - as well as into real social space.
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