radioart works by Tetsuo Kogawa

It started with a flâneur-type appearance of the performer carrying a black box from which "noisy" sounds ran out. Opening the box, it turned out to be that seven sets of radio receivers were working. One by one, the performer started turning-on the small transmitters which he dangled from his neck. A series of "manual-handling" actions went on. Finally, all of the seven transmitters were set on the table in the center of the stage. Independently as well as interactively, Haruo Higuma projected his video images to the walls.There had been no rehearsal together at all.

The seven transmitters had a similar frequency Of MF/MW such as 1630KHz ±12KHz. The subtle divergences create unexpected sounds and beats. They depend on how the performer's body especially his fingers are located and how each transmitters are located to the others.

video: (1), (2)

The system is consist of 6 medium-wave simplest transmitters without any audio input, and 2 radio receivers. The transmitters oscillate many spurious waves and interfere themselves each other. Sandwiching numbers of acrylic plates and the transmitters together, like a "mille-feuille" cake, they put themselves into unstable, tricky and delicate condition. However, infrequently, a "singular" "emergence" happens and creates SILENCE. Performer’s hands will look for such an "emergence" until it happens.Theoretically, this performance was inspired by "non-linear coupling" in Hermann Haken's Synergetics.
The piece was made for «Pour cause d’interférences» organized by Pali Meursault and Syntone on September 28 at La Fondation du doute et l’École d’art, Blois, France.
http://syntone.fr/pour-cause-dinterferences/
YouTube

Conciliation of Sferics for Radio Revoluten 2016
In the beginning, I made wide-band four transmitters covering 500KHz to 150MHz and more of the harmonics. These filled the ordinary FM receivers seamlessly with various frequencies and created "chaotic" resonances and silences in unexpected accordance with every subtle movement of my hands closer to the transmitters. The point of my live performance is: (1) not using any ready-made sound-devices; (2) less creating "music"; (3) insisting on my hands moving as a kind of "hands-dance."
YouTube vimeo (live at Halle)

This radioart performance was netstreamed by Tetsuo Kogawa from Tokyo at 19:00-19:10 GMT to Prague where Michael Cáb reconstructed it as the raw material into an unique collaboration of radioart and sound art. YouTube

Tetsuo Kogawa (Tokyo) - Lecture-Performance / discussion. Once upon a time, H. M. Enzensberger wrote, “Jedes Transitorradio ist, von seinem Bauprinzip her, zugleich ein potentieller Sender”. This does not mean that old radio was two-way. Radio receiver itself is a transmitter. Let’s try to prove it. http://www.interflugs.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/RADIOPROGRAMMfinal2.pdf https://radiodelaculturevisuelle.wordpress.com/monday-9-july/

This is a developped continuatiion of "Inductance" in London, 2010 using the two AM transmitters and coils. The video was sent from Tokyo for the Deep Wireless Festival in Toronto on May 4, 2012 curated by Nadene Thériault-Copeland and Darren Copeland. YouTube

Live at St John's Church, Island Road, Barrow-in-Furness, the 2011 FON Festival. vimeo

Cut and Splice: Transmission, directed by Richard Whitelaw at Wilton's Music Hall, London.
"The first few minutes of his performance were silent as he wrapped two water glasses with red ribbon and went on to construct a primitive radio transmitter. He produced some wild and unpredictable results by adjusting the parameters of an unstable feedback loop running between his transmitter and two household radios by moving the transmitter." (Phil England, The Wire, January 2011) mp3 (BBC)

"A performance by Tetsuo Kogawa at the Radio Without Boundaries conference from Saturday, May 29th, 2009. The performance begins with Kagawa building two AM transmitters, then the video will fade to watch him winding one of the two Tesla coils used in the performance. The last fade shows the conclusion of the performance." (transom.org) vimeo

"Tetsuo Kogawa's intricate spectacle of manipulating circuit boards which then interfered with shortwave [FM] radios, resulting in him making a kind of DIY theremin as he went along, was, like so much of the programming, interesting conceptually, but not as a performance." (Ali Maloney, The Skinny, Wed 25 Mar 2009) mp3

A lecture-performance for RadiaLx in 2008, Portugal's unique festival dedicated to radio art in Lisbon curated and directed by Ricardo Reis and Paulo Raposo.
YouTube 1 YouTube 2 document

This radioart piece was done as a lecture-performance for the AV Festival 08 conference curated and directed by Honor Harger and moderated by Sally Jane Norman and Bennett Hogg in New Castle. vimeo

This piece was contributed on February 1, 2008 for "Moving Forest - a peripatetic performance across Berlin, in which artists, technologists, ranters, hackers, poets and wotnot improvised with the ciphers, signals and sonic dimensions of the city." YouTube document

2:00-2:30pm, January 17, 2008, Tetsuo Kogawa, live from Japan via Radio Kinesonus, battles with Halifax audio artist Stephen Kelly on-site in a radio transmission race. Great Hall, Mississauga Civic Center, Canada. YouTube document

Tetsuo Kogawa built a tiny transmitter within fifteen minutes, which is pictured below. Listen to his comments and explanations. Later, he used this newly built transmitter to produce radio art: You find his "de-radio transversal" concert is the second podcast. (Radia.fm: Imagine Radio 2.0 podcast series 2.1 by Backyardradio) mp3

A radioart perfromance for Musikprotkoll at Dom im Berg, Graz, Austri was broadcast/netcast by Kunstradio. Directed by Elisabeth Zimmermann and Video by Klaus Taschler. YouTube

"A Handful of Airwaves". This was originally played for the left-channel and expected to be listened with a improvised sound for the right-channel by other artist/listener of Deep Wireless 2007, Toronto. mp3

Kai Grehn and Carsten Nicolai asked me to send some voice message on 2099 by mail and I recorded this future story. mp3
Die Kai-Grehn-Homepage

A collaboration with Jacques Foschia at Friche la Belle Mai, Marceille, Engrenages festival. mp3

Tetsuo Kogawa transmit his live streaming "How to use small transmitters for raidoart" to the conference "RE-ACTIVISM:Re-drawing the boundaries of activism in a new media environment" held in Budapest in October 14-15, 2005. YouTube

Masaharu Abe and his U-Garden commitee invited Tetsuo Kogawa at their event. YouTube mp3

An airwave-scape work using a FM receiver and a voice transformer within the scope of micro transmitters. mp3

Struggled hard with quite strong airwaves of "regular" radio stations and industorial "noises" for his 'airwave-scape'. mp3

An atempt of airwave-scape in the field of micro transmitters. mp3

Played with the various airwaves that scattered in the room. mp3

The most simplest transmitter performance without any effecter. mp3

Devoted himself to calming down the fluctuating airwaves. mp3

Was so busy in taking care of curating Radio Kinesonus program that he used his simplest system. mp3

A simple performance using two micro transmitters. mp3

Chikafumi Kawamura invited Tetsuo Kogawa for his event "Sundy Electronica" at Cafe exBodega, Yokohama. mp3

The transmitters he used this time were only two sets that are ready-made. It was his tact to quickly prepare the system: he had been too busy in preparing the basic audio and streaming system and foods for all. mp3

Struggled with electromagnetic phases went to more and more subtle. mp3

Manipulated his handmade small transmitters that were, this time, for shortwaves. mp3

A regular Art's Birthday Party. mp3

Operated his hand-made small transmitters. mp3

This is a newer and shorter version of my radio art sound performance that I did at Radiophon'ic 2003 in Brussels on November 7, 2003. The waving moves of my hands to build a transmitter and the sounds that the moves directly and indirectly (mediated by an effector) created are shown. The last voice reads "La vraie condition de l'homme, c'est de penser avec ses mains " from Denis de Rougemont's 'Penser avec les mains' (1936). I find the basic direction of my performance in this passages. mp3

This piece for Radiophonic 2003 was entitled as "Penser avec les mains" inspired by my understanding on hands through the following sayings:
"La vraie condition de l'homme, c'est de penser avec ses mains ." [the true condition of man is to think with his hands.] (Denis de Rougemont)
"Die Haede sind das auessere Gehirn des Menschen." [The hands are the outer brain of the human being. (Immanuel Kant)
"Allem Leben, allem Tun, aller Kunst muss das Handwerk vorausgehen, welches nur in der Beschraenkung erworben wird."[All life, all activity, all art must be preceded by handiwork, that can only be acquired in a limited sphere.] (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
mp3 photos

Always I prefer simplicity of machines and instrument with their unexpected complexity. This month, I used 4 transmitters, one stereo radio FM receivers and KAOSS PAD. Every component of 4 transmitters was laid on a fragile thin copper plate that would be usually prohibited. More thicker and no can-be-bent plate must be used for transmitter for the stable frequency and functions. But I appreciated instability deriving from the can-be-bent plate. I recently found that KAOSS PAD (KORG's effector) matches with my hand performance in its controlling interface. I bought it long time ago but didn't use much of it because of the limited functions. Such an insufficiency has turned out to be more viable. This is a paradox of technology. mp3

I have been looking for the original text that Immanuel Kant allegedly said "Die Hand ist das auessere Gehirn des Menschen." (The hand is the outer brain of the human being.) Quite many people cited this word. But I was unable to find this even in his "Complete Works". Can anyone let me know? mp3

The point was that I tried to display various airwaves from medium to short to VHF frequencies by just changing receiver's dial according to my inner rhythm. Given the different and idiosyncratic circumstance of the airwaves at the time, the same performance and "tune" never happens. This is what I have been interested in airwaves. Always various noses come and receiving situation is changing along with my body movements and spacial conditions. The system was very simple (a radio receiver and an small effector) but I found the created sound very multitudinous. mp3

"Radio Kinesonus Night", the first live event of Radio Kinesonus at Daikanyama Classics, Shibuya, Tokyo. mp3

This time, I used the stereo microphone to catch the sounds of my performance instead of the direct line input. Because I tried to mix the very feeble airwaves from six radio receivers. It was possible to connect each outputs of the receivers to the amplifier system, but I loved to show the atmosphere of live performance. This type of performance would be nice at a small space where the audience are surrounding me and radio sets. As H.M. Enzensberger said in his comment to Brecht, every radio receiver is in its structure a transmitter as well. They transmit very week airwaves. I was fascinated by what's happening more than I had expected. mp3

The concepts such as dialogue, editing, collage, sampling, mapping and etc. are still fascinating me. I am thinking by them in totally different ways from the original meanings of them. Deleuze and Guattari argued that "the concept is neither denotation of states of affairs nor signification of the lived; it is the event as pure sense that immediately runs through the components" (What is philosophy?) We re-create concept every time when we start with existent concepts. But it is impossible to start with nothing. So creating is a dialogue and a de-construction. My performance is to dialogue, collect, sample, map very week and trivial airwaves that are floating in the air by my own hands. mp3

More subtle hand/finger/thumb/wrist/knuckle movements than hands cut the air / flip / fold / grip / hold / knead / offer / pass / pat / place / press / pull / pump / push / put / raise / reach / rub / rub / rub / shake / slam / slap / slide / spread / spread / squeeze / stick / stick / stroke / take hold / tap / throw / thrust / tuck / turn / turn / turn / twine / twine / twist / twist / waggle / wave / wring. More subtle fields of airwaves than micro radio. Instead of communication, data transfer / reception and info-circulation. Resonance rather than communication. Toward an another side of technology. mp3

"Requiem for Bagdad." Airwaves have innumerable horizons. Moving of my hands reveals them. It cannot explain anything to say that the electrodynamic position of the hands changes the capacitance, inductance and impedance of the fields that numbers of ultra micro transmitters. Hands themselves have their own airwaves and are in the airwaves. The positions and movements refer to my feeling and conceptuality but there should be far more than such elements. While improvising, conceptually, I was thinking of a requiem for Bagdad since the modern war tries to erase all of horizons, physical or conceptual. In fact, the US Air Force used "E-bomb" to knock the Iraqi TV off the air with an "experimental electromagnetic pulse device of over two billion watts". This was the totally opposite use of airwaves against emancipating and finding innumerable horizons of airwaves. mp3

As usual, my performance was to communicate with the electro-magnetic fields and horizons of various airwaves. Due to the mistake to connect the output of my own mixer to a vacant input of the main mixer, however, I had to puzzlingly pump up the full volume. The consequence was a tremendous distortions and totally unexpected noise sounds. Since I always insist in the live process of my performance, I will leave the recording as it is. mp3

Tetsuo Kogawa's interst in hands over the airwaves was already consistent. mp3 mp4 (partial)

Cerebrating Art's Birthday, Radio Kinesonus started and Tetsuo Kogawa began to stream his live performance regularly with Hiroshi Hasegawa and many guest artists over the net. mp3

"Natural Radia" (Performance between technology and hands; airwaves and physical space; and Vienna and Vancouver). mp3

Tetsuo Kogawa's radioart works