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New news: things to see and hear
Published 23/05/2011 03:54

Hi. How are you? We’re pretty, pretty good. This is why:

We were lucky enough to work with Tom Cho on our latest Australian FM episode ‘The Sound of Music’. We were also lucky to secure the talents of Marc Martin; you can blame him for the incredible illustration.  If you’d like to listen to it, well, it’s waiting for you right next door, here.

On Thursday the May 26, the 2011 Emerging Writers’ Festival begins with the not-to-be-missed-unless-you-have-a-very-good-reason-for-instance-you-are-trapped-in-a-hot-air-balloon-or-on-a-date-with-Jeff-Goldblum First Word.

It looks good. Go to there. Paper Radio producers, Jessie Borrelle and Jon Tjhia, are also presenting a workshop revealing how to create your own literary podcast, as part of the Festival, on Saturday June 4. You can book a place in it here.

Our next episode will be the second installment from NZ writer Thomasin Sleigh, as part of her Weather series, boasting sound design by Miyuki Jokiranta and illustration from Ned Wenlock. After that we have The Cosmic Frequency, a documentary about Maggie Iaquinto, an amateur radio operator who forged a bond with the cosmonauts on Mir in the early 1990s. We Buy Your Kids are creating the album artwork with sound design from our own magnificent Jon Tjhia.


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Aural Pleasures
Published 29/08/2010 10:25

CSIRAC
It’s been years now since we started “thinking outside the square”, so nobody was especially surprised to learn of the latest geometrics to fall victim to inadequacy. Outside the Circle is the theme of this year’s Australasian Sound Recordings Association conference (ASRA), being held at the SLV from the 1-3 of September. The program this year aims to:

“explore the development and growth of sound cultures that began life outside of commercial and mainstream circles. The conference aims to provide a forum for discussions concerning collections, recordings, research and technology based on alternative perspectives and paradigms. We hope to learn more about the individuals and groups working on the ‘outside’ as well as their unusual uses of recorded sound.“

We’re so excited about this conference. Here are a few highlights that we think will pique your interest:

  • Composer and sonologist Paul Doornbusch will be delivering his keynote about the reconstruction of CSIRAC: the fourth all-electronic digital computer in the world, which in the 1950s was the first to also play music.
  • The conference features a Magic Lantern and Music Show, and an exclusive introduction to the Australian Mediatheque at Federation Square.
  • Jon Tjhia (of Paper Radio) is presenting a ‘pop up’ session about his work with ABC Radio Australia’s Pacific Break competition and its interactions with emerging recording artists in the Pacific Islands.
  • Also from the ABC, John Jacobs discusses the innovative, award-winning collaborative project Pool.
  • Dr Shannon Faulkhead looks to a time when Koori knowledge can co-exist within Victoria’s collective knowledge, in ‘Respectful Co-existence of Orality and Text’.
  • There’s a free public lecture: ‘Pecan Summer – a 21st century Australian opera’ will be presented by Deborah Cheetham, Indigenous soprano, actor, opera composer and author.
  • Clinton Green (of Shame File Music, who released the ineffable Artefacts of Australian Experimental Music compilation – and is soon to release a second volume) offers a historical overview of the Australian cassette underground.
  • Stephan Schutze, sound designer, lecturer and Director of the intimidatingly comprehensive Sound Library will also be appearing.

    • The provisional program is now online as a pdf, and you can still register for the conference. Bargainesque.

    So, um — be there or be square.

    Paper Radio AM2 is coming soon.

    Acronym Index:

    ABC: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
    ASRA: Australasian Sound Recordings Association
    NFSA: National Film and Sound Archive
    SLV: State Library of Victoria

    * Image: The CSIRAC, via Keko on Flickr


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    The Paper Radio Editorial Advisory Committee gets lucky
    Published 22/06/2010 03:27

    There are some things in this world that you should just know — like Elton John’s real name (Reginald Kenneth Dwight), beetles taste like apples and wasps taste like pine nuts, and Chloe Lane is a New Zealand writer and the founder/publisher/editor of Wellington-based Hue & Cry.

    Hue & Cry is an intimidatingly well-made and well-furnished art/design/literary journal that isn’t stocked in Australia (yet) but is arguably worth flying to Wellington to secure a copy of.

    The journal’s much-anticipated 4th issue Champion This! has just been released. Oh, and the other good news is that Chloe is now a member of the Paper Radio Editorial Advisory Committee.

    I think we just exhausted our annual forward slash quota.


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    The Paper Radio Production Hiccup Forecast™
    Published 12/06/2010 14:11

    The Paper Radio Production Hiccup Forecast™ has been a little inaccurate over the last few weeks, as you may have noticed. Our first podcast for our AM (non-fiction) channel, originally slated for publication in late May, is still in our hot little hands and we are itching to hoist it onto the internet for you — so stick with us, it shouldn’t be too long now. And, we swear, it’s worth the wait. Nimble Brisbane-based writer Benjamin Law has queue-jumped the AM schedule and our next podcast is a production of an extract from his cult-worthy debut book The Family Law.

    May was a distracting and temperate month. As the knitters sharpened their needles, and mothballs were outed, we were busy pitching our pitch and podcasting about podcasts for the Emerging Writer’s Festival. The New Yorker happened upon our first episode, which resulted in a day of bashfully punching the air and feeling lucky. The Literary Platform appeared and boy do they know how to show off projects that marry literature and technology. We also spoke to the kids over at Last Magazine in New York, New York, who posted a precis of the project, in which it was controversially stated that one of the Paper Radio team has a ‘good face for radio’.

    Thank you to everyone who has supported, listened to and passed by the website in the past six weeks. It takes us some time to wrestle paper into a radio, and we really appreciate your patience.

    Don’t touch that dial browser. We’ll be back in a tick.


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    Paper Radio launches
    Published 25/04/2010 07:36

    After mountainous hours of pixel shifting and finger tapping – and countless more wrestling sound waves – we are extremely relieved and excited to announce that Paper Radio has now arrived. For those of you visiting for the first time we should explain that Paper Radio is a sonic interpretation of the unique culture of Australasia – in the shape of a podcast.

    The first episode from the FM (fiction) channel, Chris Somerville’s The Drowning Man, is the story of an aloof teacher whose life is defined and dominated by the irascible temperament of water. In our next edition, a documentary for the AM (non-fiction) channel, Georgia Moodie rewinds to the 1920s and tails the experiences of the first African American jazz musicians to tour Australia.

    The near future holds audio productions from Rachel O’Neill, Benjamin Law and Thomasin Sleigh. We publish monthly, or if we’re having a good spell, a little more often.

    You can subscribe to the podcast and join the mailing list if you want to stay tuned in. Who can resist a broadcast metaphor?

    Jessie Borrelle and Jon Tjhia
    Executive Producers / Paper Radio


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