The idea:
Ann: I did my first pirate radio broadcast in April, 1996 with another community group that I work with in Indian Orchard, Massachusetts. I helped Citizens Against Pollution, a grassroots environmental group create an Earth Day pirate radio broadcast outside of UniFirst/Interstate Nuclear Services, so the women in the group could tell their stories about living near an industrial/nuclear laundry that has polluted their neighborhood. I began to imagine how pirate radio could fill gaps in the WYRED project. For example youth work on the Web was not easily available to their parents because none of them had a computer with Internet access at home whereas a radio broadcast could reach most families in the Taylor Apartments. The idea of pairing sewing with electronic technology has roots in the Internet Community Project that Rolf and I did with his third graders in Minneapolis in 1993. In that project limited computer equipment meant we had to come up with a companion project to keep students hands busy while they were waiting for their turn on the computer. Modeling this part of the project on an old fashioned sewing bee, in theory the students would work on their needlework and talk about technology issues. In practice we just did a lot of chatting while they worked on their sewing. The tactile needlework projects which were entirely within students grasp was a perfect complement to the ephemeral electronic technology.

Nuts and bolts of the project:
Ann: I ordered the transmitter from Agrello engineering in Schenectady after doing some research at the RPI electronics club. The TX2000 costs about $40.00 and is supposed to have a range of 1.5 miles. Because pirate radio is illegal, the transmitter arrives unassembled, but only requires a little soldering to finish it. As soon as the transmitter is plugged into a 9 volt battery it starts to broadcast. It has a dial to tune in both the radio station and the length of the antenna. The transmitter functions best if the antenna is vertical. We started tying a helium balloon to the end of the antenna to hold the antenna straight up. Because I am working with youth in WYRED I have purposefully kept the transmitter antenna tuned to a short range to stay within legal limits. This had not posed a problem because the Taylor Apartments are high rises and there is no limit on vertical transmission, just how far you broadcast horizontally. I picked up a rechargeable 9 volt battery and ordered the 9 volt solar battery recharger from Edmund Scientific for about $15. There is information about pirate radio on the Internet, a good site is Radio Free Berkeley. Rolf Hanson, Carol Sundberg, Mary Theresa Streck and I made the black linen hats for the WYRED/Spark group. Through a series of workshops the youth decorated these hats combing sewing and fabric paint with sequins, feathers, felt and mirrors. Heather Saddler and Kathleen Brandt, both RPI graduate students helped facilitate the hat making workshops. The design was based on a Thai hat that my sister gave me five years ago. I originally sewed a model hat to introduce the transmitter hat to the youth. The hat has Building 3 of the Taylor Apartments and the Hudson River winding along the side. I made this design with fabric that I got from my grandmother. The microphone from the transmitter pokes out in the center of Building 3. This hat quickly became community property in WYRED/Spark, embraced equally by boys and girls. Because the transmitter was expensive, everyone shared the single transmitter hat. We were going to draw straws and choose one of the hats to hold the transmitter, but the youth hats became so identified with particular individuals that the youth decided to use the hat I had made. The radio group spent several weeks figuring out the procedure for passing the hat, figuring out an rhythm to help mask any possible interference to the radio signal as the hat moved from head to head. The clapping also helped establish a group participation in between the times when an individual took over the floor. On November 1, at 4:50 PM the pre- broadcast rehearsal ended and during the ten minutes before we went live, Wesley, Quekaebah and Vershun rushed to the phone to call their families and tell them to tune in their radios to 105.9 for the broadcast. Later, seconds after the broadcast ended, Zikkia was on the phone with her mom talking about the broadcast. Candi ran upstairs, then came back down to say her mom had listened to the whole thing in their apartment. It was the first time I saw youth involve their families in a WYRED event. These kids now have the tools to take their on-line work and share it with such an important audience -- their families at home in the midst of their regular early evening routines. The pairing of pirate radio with Internet, extremely local with global, opens up new possibilities for both networks.

Thinking behind the project:
Ann: Anne-Jorunn Berg uses the concept of technological diffusion, or how technology is put to use in the world, to frame her work. In the past, technological diffusion focused on whether people were quick or reluctant to adopt new technology. But recent scholarship has spawned a more complex understanding. Ruth Schwartz Cowan coined the term "consumption junction" to describe the time and place technologies are used. A careful study of technology through the eyes of the consumer can reveal unintended uses of technology. Madeleine Akrich, points out that the people who design technology in essence provide a script but the user is free to deviate from this script. "Intentions baked into technology may restrict the flexibility of a given artifact, but they cannot altogether determine its use or meaning." (Berg, p.l96) Technical diffusion provides an entry point into a positive feminist discourse about technology. The tiny TX2000 radio transmitter we use in both Radio Active and WYRED provides an excellent example of intended and revised scripts. The user guide for the radio transmitter describes it as a "high quality Law Enforcement grade device... the TX2000 does not drift when touched nor are there any harmonic spurious transmissions to adjacent frequencies, stability is solid as a rock." (TX2000 Transmitter Instructions, Agrello Engineering, Schenectady, New York, 1993) The manual goes on to describe the transmitter "taped to a wall inside a house. Then we drove exactly 3 miles ...we were able to hear every sound in the room without any problem." If we were following the script for this piece of equipment, we would be engaged in surveillance - - eavesdropping on people rather than transmitting to an audience. The hardware would be taped to a wall in a room rather than sewn into hats. We would be hunched inside a car, ready for a fast getaway, rather than standing with a group of children in front of a public housing project. I can vouch for the indescribable feeling of power in revising the script of a piece of electronic equipment. When I first decided to place the transmitter in clothing, I was intentionally imagining a female counterpart to the guy at MIT who wears a huge helmet of gear, including a camera, on his head. Instead of a wearing a huge clunk of machinery that screams, "cyborg," I am embedding a tiny transmitter in an embroidered hat. Anne-Jorun Berg observed that in dealing with technology, a woman is more "conscious about its (appliance's) appearance in the same aesthetic sense that she cares about her furniture."( (Berg, p.170) My impulse to put the transmitter in a hat is consistent with observed gendered responses to technology. However transmitter hats will challenge the gender and age roles regarding use, by putting myself and youth in charge of electronic media production. We are also challenging dominant media conventions by taking the means of broadcast onto our own heads and using a mobile unit to connect with community. It is important to be aware of how I am part of gender traditions and where I deviate from them. It is also interesting to see the Sparks youth rescript the hat that I perceive as female into a gender neutral hat that they all, girls and boys alike, are perfectly comfortable wearing. Perhaps because TV is so monstrously overwhelming, I am drawn to pirate radio. It felt so powerful to actually build the transmitter at the RPI electronics club, to wear it on my body, to run it off solar power and to use it in the midst of a community action. Electronic art practice helps me reorient myself in the space in which I am most likely to escape problems by watching TV. In nudging myself and others off the couch, we confront problems by creating electronic art. The exhilaration from this art practice sustains rather than sedates. The power of a participatory model is reflected in the comments of one of Paulo Freire's students, who said "I know now that I am cultured." When asked how he knew this, he answered, "Because I work, and working I transform the world." (Freire, p. 48)

Looking ahead:
Ann: The strategy of using call and response to test the transmitter broke down the barrier between performers and audience. In the future I would love to integrate this type of call and response into the final radio broadcast/performance. I can imagine inviting our radio listeners to pick up a wooden spoon and a pan (or any percussive object) and to come to an open window. We will start playing, using call and response. I imagine the drumming sounds bouncing off the brick walls, drifting down from open windows on all sides. I imagine our drumming mixing with and bridging the traffic sounds that slice between the two buildings. I can even hear cars adding a layer by honking their horns before they fly across the Congress street bridge. Meanwhile the whole performance is picked up and transmitted over the Internet. Then we might come closer to Brecht's vision for radio when it was in its infancy. The radio "must follow the primary objective of turning the audience not only into pupils but into teachers." 12

Return to Student Work
Description of the Process layer
Index of the Process pages