Anja Kaufmann, Roman Haefeli “RadioSolarKompass”
Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Connect / Artists
Anja Kaufmann, Roman Haefeli: RadioSolarKompass
RadioSolarKompass
Website, software, internet radios, 2005/2011
The Internet project RadioSolarKompass by media and sound artists Anja Kaufmann and Roman
Haefeli isn’t really a compass, but a 24-hour journey around the world, an acoustic journey following the sun. Above all, with more than 2000 radio stations contributing, RadioSolarKompass is ‘the’ radio of the age of the Internet, mirroring the global availability of information. Turning on this ‘radio’ on radiosolarkompass.org it may well be that one finds oneself listening to the morning news of Yerevan, of Nairobi, or of Manila. The software of this Internet project globally links streams of local online radio stations and taps them. The visual realisation of the project shows the locations while they are broadcasting on a global map. The programme of RadioSolarKompass controls the linkage of geographic coordinates and the time the sun rises at the locations of the predefined radio stations. Since, at some place, the sun will be rising the whole day through one will receive morning news from all over the world the whole day through. The density of local radio stations and the time of the sunrise govern the order and the length of the individual streams which can have a length of two to five minutes. “The resulting composition can be perceived as the audible language of an invisible reality”, Anja Kaufmann explains. The constant shift in languages, in places, and in importance makes the virtual journey around the world a real experience. Asynchronies are perceived as synchronies and reveal their respective regional or local characteristics as differences as well as the well-known global conformity of news casts. The uninterrupted continuum of broadcasts by original broadcasting stations reveals the core of the question of actually how globally we are informed and how far this claim can carry us.
The project was brought up to date, re-designed, and re-
programmed for the exhibition Connect. (Design: Kríbek)