is radio dead?

Is Radio Dead? Not at SFX Seoul

"Babel'' by Kim Seung-young is one of the sound art works at Sound Effects Seoul Radio 2008, which runs through Aug. 26. / Courtesy of SFX Seoul

By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter

Is radio dead? It depends on whom you ask. Many may no longer listen to radio since their ears are perennially plugged into their iPod, portable media players or DMB phones. But hop in a taxi and it's a different story, with drivers keeping updated on traffic and news via the radio.

According to the organizers of Sound Effects Seoul Radio 2008 (SFX Seoul), radio is definitely still alive and relevant.

``Radio is a presence in our lives. It's kind of like a soundtrack to our lives. Something that you don't know quite what to expect from, something always in the background and usually it is something that you don't pay attention to directly. …That's something similar to the way sound art is. Sound art is not an artwork that you can focus on. It is always affected by other sounds. There are a lot of parallels to that with radio. Radio is a medium for presenting sound art,'' Baruch Gottlieb, director and co-founder of SFX Seoul, told The Korea Times.

Sound art, which uses sound as a medium, has been gaining ground among young Korean artists in recent years.

Gottlieb and leading media art curator Yang Ji-yoon organized the first SFX Seoul last year to introduce sound art to the Korean audience by showing different media art works and performances.

Gottlieb said SFX Seoul, funded by the Arts Council of Korea, focuses specifically on radio art to ``explore the issues of public participation in media and performance art.''

``There's all kinds of sonic creativities using radio around the world that are not well known in Korea. So we wanted to have people access this kind of creativity through the radio. They don't have to go here (to the gallery) to access the works, they can just listen,'' he said.

SFX Seoul includes a temporary radio station, which is intended to be an extension of Japanese artist Tetsuo Kogawa's Mini-FM concept, wherein hundreds of people set up their own mini-radio stations in Tokyo.

The event also explores whether radio is still relevant in the age of the Internet. ``Why is it so important to broadcast? There are a few sides that are relevant. (Academic) Jonathan Stern says that one of the aspects of radio that makes it different from the Internet is that it is autonomous. While the Internet is tied up with servers and computers, Kogawa showed that with just $20 and a 9-volt battery you can broadcast to anybody within a kilometer. It has a very different presence from the Internet. Kogawa said radio is centripetal, not centrifugal, since it brings people together to the center,'' Gottlieb said.

There are other aspects of radio, such as its limitations, over-regulation of the frequency spectrum and professional standards, that still make it very interesting in the age of the Internet.

SFX Seoul's temporary radio station operates on the frequency 101.5 MHz FM from Art Space Hut, Hongdae. Since Aug. 5, Gottlieb and Yang have been broadcasting a bilingual radio show from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. It uses a one-watt transmitter that broadcasts the signal only in Hongdae, but anyone can listen through the Web site http://sfx.yonsei.ac.kr.

On the show, they play new music and sound pieces, and interview Korean and foreign artists, indie singers and sound art experts from academia.

Yang and Gottlieb joked that running the temporary radio station has ``taken over our lives for the past week,'' but it has been enjoyable especially since people have been coming to Art Space Hut to watch.

``One of the things I love is during the broadcast there's a live audience. You can hear the laughing and clapping. Anyone can come in and watch. It is part of the installation. It's the living media part of the show,'' he said.

Aside from the radio show, the exhibition features sound and media art works by 30 artists from Korea and around the world. There are a handful of works on display at Art Space Hut, but most are found at the Croft Gallery in Pyeongchang-dong.

For more information, visit http://sfx.yonsei.ac.kr (English and Korean) or http://blog.naver.com/sfxseoul (Korean only).

cathy@koreatimes.co.kr