"Crossing the equator implies a change of rotation described by the Coriolis effect. In the upside-down world everything is inverted but masked by gravity.  There too, there are imposed and plutocratic rules. But there are a few singular people who swim upstream, avoiding the turns or simply strangling them; they know how to swim much faster, surrounded by the ocean. And they know how to break the rules."

David Chesworth (@david-chesworth) is known for his distinctive and diverse explorations of high and low brow themes via synth wave, electronics, ensemble music, experimental opera, installations, video artworks. Performances at BAM Next Wave, Bang on a Can Marathon, Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, Sydney Biennale. Co-founder of post-punk group Essendon Airport. Early solo albums recorded for Innocent Records in late 70s early 80s.

https://davidchesworth.bandcamp.com/

HOCast #64 - David Chesworth

Hanna Tuulikki - Seals'kin

Around midnight of the 14th of December 2023 the Sun emitted an unusually strong solar flare - an unimaginably vast and powerful eruption of primary cosmic energy. The event was observed and monitored by terrestrial, atmospheric and space-wandering instruments of various government and scientific agencies of we, the humans. And with a welter of extraordinary imagery and catastrophic predictions, was reported widely in global media.

This significant space weather event occurred while I was developing this episode in response to a prompt by longtime listener Philip Toydog to ‘do something with UTC’ - Coordinated Universal TIme - and more specifically the sonic experience of UTC familiar to many who have dabbled in listening to Short Wave or High Frequency radio transmissions. 

As a boy had a germanium crystal radio - a Japanese made SR-150 Science Egg Radio. The Egg in the title described its shape - a clear plastic egg containing a tangle of wires and a giant diode. It required no power - an alligator clip attached to anything metal (my bed frame) that would act as an aerial and a decidedly hospital-like mono earpiece was used to listen discreetly. Tuning was by winding a thin steel columnar screw up or down to locate AM signals. I did enjoy finding the ABC and listening to music programs, but I also enjoyed the spaces between, the ever varying static. A couple of decades later I bought a Sony World Radio with shortwave capability and explored the incredible ephemeral sounds of short wave transmissions coming from who-knew-where bouncing from the ionosphere.

One of these was Coordinated Universal Time - a hypnotic crackle-and-fade 60 beats per minute pulsation periodically defined by two American-accented voices - a woman and a man - announcing, once a minute, the Universal Time moment about to be traversed. You can read about UTC in the usual places. 

Thinking back on my 80s and 90s interest in short wave radio, the enigmatic world of Number Stations came to mind, which in turn prompted a reminiscence of seeing Jean Cocteau’s 1950 film Orphee, at a tiny theatrette in a federal government building in Brisbane where cinemateque films borrowed from the National Library were screened maybe only once a month, on a Thursday night to an audience of maybe 20 subterranean cinephiles. 

One aspect of that film that fascinated me is the use of a car radio as a site where the titular angry self-obsessed poet listens to and transcribes surrealistic sentences declaimed (in French of course) by a resonant deep male voice, plagiarising transmissions perhaps emanating from the underworld of the dead. Jean Cocteau confirmed that this oracular radio was inspired by BBC radio broadcasts he heard during the Nazi occupation of France – mysterious apparent nonsense of numerals, words and musical fragments carrying coded messages from the British military to French resistance fighters during WW2. Prototypical examples of what would come to be known as Numbers Stations - tools of trade of state-based secret service organisations.

There’s much more of course, but save to say this new composition crowds various of these inspirations together with my modular musings into a drifting enigmatic roll on the plasma sands of the ionospheric beach gazing into the stellar maw of our solar system as it coughs a chaotic bolus of x-rays and plasma our way. 

Gary Warner, 2023
Host/Composer, Sonic Sketchbooks podcast

79 Sonic Sketchbooks - UTC

79 SONIC SKETCHBOOKS - UTC

Public Program with José Roca, moderated by Maria Fernanda Cardoso

Public Program | José Roca

sonic sketchbooks is a podcast series about sound art, art music and field recording hosted by sydney-based artist gary warner

79 SONIC SKETCHBOOKS - UTC

sonic sketchbooks

Related tracks