Gridpubliclock

(1993)

A performance for radio.

A sounding of a city through its inhabitants, mediated by an electrocuted radio-phone system.

Presentation History
– Resonance FM, London, England, Summer 1998.
– Danger in Paradise on CKUT-FM, Montréal, Canada, April 1993.

Some excerpts from the Montréal performance appear on the Hole in the Head CD (but they are not identified as Gridpubliclock on the CD).

Gridpubliclock utilizes a radio station, an audience and telephones as its instruments.

The host welcomes the audience from the studio and then leaves the studio.

The host calls from every public phone he runs across and asks the audience to tell him where to go next.

A silent operator at the radio station fields the calls coming in and puts them on the air without any screening.

The fact that there is no host (no central voice ‘managing’ the calls) created, in the two instances the piece was performed, a human soundscape that turned radio and performance inside out.

Even with low levels of participation (where just the performer participates for example) the empty space between calls and the ambience of the city leaking through each telephone booth creates a portrait of the city.