Radio Divination I
Listen here:
This Radio Divination was created using only recordings from a ham radio given to me by a dear friend. A ham radio, or amateur radio is a device used by individuals to transmit communictation in a non-commercial and non-pecuniary manner. All samples are captured from the “in between frequencies” and accidental squelches of transmissions; signals of amateur radio hosts communicating with eachother, morse code, emergency transmission, + more. These signals are bridged together by an overlap of Avatar Lilith’s voice stuck in a feedback loop moving forwards and backwards, reflecting in on itself.
Radio Divination
In August 2024 I started a Radio Divination practice after I bought a radio to wake up to and help me migrate away from my morning phone usage. Radio Divination is a term I use for a frequency scanning deep listening practice that informs my day. Every morning instead of reaching for my phone, I reach across my nightstand table and perform a meditation for myself where I blindly tune in on the frequencies between stations. As I glide across the frequency spectrum, I bridge together fragments of sound, voice, conversation, and artifacts that I use to inform the rest of my day and tap into the collective consciousness. It is a way of abstracting moments of time and space, and tuning in to the sounds of the universe.
Kyle Chayka writes in Filterworld as reference to tuning radio dials vs hitting buttons, “The author observes the difference between manually hitting a button to tune into the station and wiggling a knob back and forth navigating through static and eventually finding the perfect analog position. The latter might be less precise and inconvenient but it’s slightly more magical and humane…There is no preset, no predetermined solution. The technology limits us to certain modes of consumption. You can’t stray out of the lines.” As a meditation, I gently turn the knobs (romantically) to try to access the in-between spaces of the channels performing an intimate deep listening, gliding across the frequency spectrum. I bridge the gaps of fragmented phrases and glue my own conversations together from fragments of conversations, tuning them into my own interpretation of a collective consciousness derived from a particular moment of time.
As of late, one phrase that has come up quite a bit is “I need to be in control…” Perhaps I had stumbled through an NPR interview, or the BBC news station. Pulling from the vastness of this ether has been a way for me to distill moments of time, and be fully present in time and space, which is important now more than ever in the midst of overconsumption and the attention economy.