ivivatitie.: . ]ovrvat of Perforvavce tvaie.

1ot. , ^o. , ^orevber 200

ISSN: 155-2935 ,online, http:,,liminalities.net,3-3,cardinal.htm

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Serge Cardinal







1936. laber & laber London publish an essay by Rudol Arnheim
dedicated to the inention o the radio, and probing its artistic
potential. Concurrently, in Berlin, Goebbels and litler inade the
airwaes with their own declaration-they declare that radio`s destiny
was to become a state propaganda tool o unassailable orce. At that
moment in time, Rudol Arnheim is not yet the amous American art
historian who will make painting, music, and architecture
understandable through experimental psychology. le is merely a
young ilm critic, temporarily exiled to Italy ater the Nazis took
control o the German Republic. \et, though expatriated rom its
place o origin, he asks Gestalt psychology`s undamental questions:
why do we see or hear things as we do, how can art change the way
we see and hear 1hese questions suddenly take on a dramatic tone,
or, as a world war looms, all at once they seem to be about the
uture o humanity.
Naturally, in Raaio: .v .rt of ovva, Arnheim examined the
social and political possibilities o the technology, but much more
important, he tried to place it in the realm o perceptual inention. In
his own words, Arnheim understands that i an art o sound can hae
a social and political impact, it is because society and politics are irst
a partition o the perceptible and a partition o sensibility, politics is a
orm o aesthetics: a partition between what can and cannot be seen
or heard, a partition between what can and cannot be joined together,

8,-6, :"-#$("; is assistant proessor in the Department o Art listory and lilm
Studies at the Uniersity o Montreal.
Raaiobovic Perforvavce

2
a partition between what can and cannot be intermingled.
1
Con-
sequently, an art o sound can reconigure a political and social order
only i it reshapes the social and political partition o our acoustic
sensitiity. Arnheim knows that artists seriously interested in radio
perormances - l. 1. Marinetti and Pino Masnata or instance - aim at
the same aesthetic target.
2
But he also knows how quickly a struggle
or a redeined sensitiity can become a war on people-how quickly
radio`s capacities to synthesise ininite simultaneous actions can
become a rapid transmission o war orders.
3
lor this one important
reason he needs to look more rigorously at the aesthetic potential o
radio perormances.
As in his seminal essay on cinema, Arnheim begins by laying out
in the broadest sense the perceptual characteristics o the medium o
radio programming so he may thus, rom this base, explore its
expressie potential. lirst, once it is understood that radio uses
eects, words and music essentially as sound-not as imprints,
symbols and orms-Arnheim endeaours to delineate how the
dynamic usion o these ormer elements could create a music o
global dimensions.
4
Second, he deines the topographic indicators
one must recognise or naigation within this sonic unierse. Once it
is also understood that broadcasting does not proide the deinition,
the limits and structure o a space, but simply establishes a
topological relationship between sounds o arying intensity,
Arnheim tries to establish procedures or containment or resonance,
juxtaposition or discordant superimposition that will orge the
emergence o an ability to grasp, perceptually, an intense, deep space.
5


1. See Jacques Ranciere, e Partage av .ev.ibte. .tbetiqve et otitiqve ,Paris: La
labrique, 2000,.
2. See l. 1. Marinetti and Pino Masnata, La Radia ,1933,`, in Douglas Kahn and
Gregory \hitehead ,eds., !irete.. vagivatiov: ovva, Raaio, ava tbe .ravtCarae
,Cambridge: MI1 Press, 1992,, p. 265-268.
3. See 1imothy C. Campell, !irete.. !ritivg iv tbe .ge of Marcovi ,Minneapolis:
Uniersity o Minnesota Press, 2006, 94.
4. Rudol Arnheim, Raaio: .v .rt of ovva ,Salem: Ayer Company Publishers, 1986,
28-29, 34-35, and 42.
5. Arnheim 52-55, and 95-96.
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3
lurthermore, once it is understood that radio is utterly ree to
reconigure the temporal landscape o an eent, Arnheim lists the
editing procedures-reduction and transposition-that break up one
dimensional, linear moement through time, and render apparent the
shiting relationships between inite sound segments that may at
times reside within a unierse created by another sound, yet at other
times be a cosmos o their own, within which resident sounds dwell.
6

But i his analyses go beyond a simple catalogue o radio`s
attributes, it is because o the second element in this twoold claim:
the radio drama |...| is capable o creating an entire world complete
in itsel.`

1hus, we should be able to ealuate the success o a radio

program-its capacity to arouse the empathy and participation o our
senses aside-by its power to test the boundaries o hearing
8
and by
its capacity to inoke other uses o that aculty: a resh, discordant
and unattached employment o the senses, the imagination, the
memory and the ery thinking process.
1o probe Arnheim`s claim to its ull depth, I read his essay in
relation to the logic o sensation o Gilles Deleuze. I there is a
iolence to this act o comparing the two, it`s not a question o
turning our guns on Arnheim. \e will not re-write him here. \e will
melt down his cannons to recast them, so to better use them in our
own battle. \e must not oerlook the act that the public-the
listener-is physiologically no dierent or us then or Arnheim.
1hus i social circumstances since Arnheim`s time hae become
exacerbated, his assertions should point to an aggraated crisis.
Circumstances hae changed dramatically: It may be that belieing
in this world, in this lie, becomes our most diicult task, or the task
o a mode o existence still to be discoered on our plane o
immanence today.`
9
1his way o lie does not come as a git, it can
only be constructed: it is the product o an experiment with lie`s

6. Arnheim 105-11.
. Arnheim 13.
8. Arnheim 136.
9. Gilles Deleuze and llix Guattari, ,-'. /0 1-)+2023-45, trans. lugh 1omlinson
and Graham Burchell ,New \ork: Columbia Uniersity Press, 1994, 5.
!"#$%&'%($) +,-.%-/"(),

4
driing orces, its materials and structures, time and space, the power
o our perception. In certain circumstances, radio ,or a sound
perormance, may well be a possible ehicle or testing the
possibilities o moements and intensities`
10
o this unierse,
moements and intensities capable o |giing| birth to new modes
o existence`
11
and creating consciousness o a cosmos that is, as yet,
in many ways intangible. A world as ethereal as the one Columbus set
out rom luela on the carael 0"(1" 2"-$" to discoer, a world
more deined by hope and need than by any accurate representation.
Arnheim not only belieed in the capacity o radio to hurdle
space, abolish rontiers and gie uniersal access to the complete
spectrum o human actiity
12
but also, as we deduce rom his essay, in
its capacity to stimulate contentious exchanges within complex
organisations and draw the entire planet into the sphere o sonic
inluence.
In wireless the sounds and oices o reality claimed relationship with the
poetic word and the musical note, sounds born o the earth and those born
o the spirit ound each other, and so music entered the material world, the
world eneloped itsel in music, and reality, newly created by thought in all
its intensity, presented itsel much more directly, objectiely and concretely
than on printed paper: what hitherto had only been thought or described
now appeared materialised, as a corporal actuality.
13

1oday, this is the sense in which Arnheim`s assertions can be best
appreciated, and this is how I will approach them in this study: 1he
arrangement o radio`s sounds presents a twoold enture, a chance
to both attain a new listening dimension and rediscoer the world.
Only by exploring the singular macrocosm o radio will our world be
restored. Not as a static presence, but as a dynamic potential or
actiity and change. !"#$%3 4( 4-1 %. 0%5(# became a guide or radio
artists, but has not yet ound its legitimate place in the realm o radio
or perormance studies-i requently reerred to, it is only as a

10. Deleuze and Guattari 4.
11. Deleuze and Guattari 4.
12. Arnheim 14 and 226-256.
13. Arnheim 15.
erge Caraivat
5
useul part in an argumentation aiming at its already gien
conclusions. Recasting Arnheim`s study can help us understand not
only why a oice heard on radio may acquire so much power, but
also how a multimedia perormance can reshaped our time-space-
once understood that this perormance replays in its own ways many
radio`s eatures: disembodiment o the oice, schizophrenic editing o
words, coupling o a recorded past with an oer-ampliication o the
present, a music o noises, etc. \e only need to ollow the story line
o his essay, and rerain ourseles rom making quick analogies with
the actual perormances. \e only need to lie through him the
inentieness o some radio eents that opened up new ways o
encountering the world, and see or ourseles i our radically new
multimedia stage apparatus are not only repetitions and displace-
ments o an old technology.
14


!"# #%&'(')*+ )'(),%-.*/)#-

1o join the game, Arnheim inents. le sets up a little Italian style
theatre: he delineates a space, he places the actors, he sets out the
stage directions. lis irst little story puts us in a ca in the south o
Italy, a isherman`s spot, its iew o the sea dominating the street`s
clamour, where all our attention is on the boats returning to port.
15
A
charming country scene, with a ew details to orient us, a scene
prepared to capture sounds: spitting, crackling, shouting, whistling.
a lrench cbav.ovvette. 1he ca`s waiter has turned up the radio. But
this act will obliterate all sense o space and direction already
established, and utterly transorm the little place. 1he radio program
does not just become one o the many sounds in the little ca. No, it

14. lor detailed considerations about sound and radio artworks that can still hae
an inluence on actual perormances, see Christine on Assche, ovic Proce... |ve
vovrette geograbie ae. .ov. ,Paris: Lditions du Centre Pompidou, 2002,, Douglas
Kahn, ^oi.e, !ater, Meat: . i.tor, of ovva iv tbe .rt. ,Cambridge: MI1 Press,
1999,, Christo Migone, !ritivg .tova: 1be ovic. of avgvage ,Los Angeles: Lrrant
Bodies Press, 2001,, Allen S. \eiss, Pbavta.vic Raaio ,Durham: Duke Uniersity
Press, 1995,.
15. Arnheim 13.
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6
establishes, instantly, its own space by the simple orce o its sound
waes, as it blends into the ca`s ambience, at once integrated and
detached.
1he announcer inormed us that they were going to broadcast an hour o
German olk-songs and he hoped we would enjoy them. And then a typical
German male oice choir sang the old songs that eery German knows
rom childhood. In German, rom London, in a little Italian place where
strangers are almost unknown. And the ishermen, hardly one o whom had
been in a big town, let alone abroad, listened motionless. Ater a while the
waiter seemed to think we should hae a change, so he got on to an Italian
station, and as an hour`s gramophone records was on just then, we heard a
lrench chansonnette. lrench, rom Rome, in that illage!
16

1his radio program is not simply sound, it is a demonstration o
the immense disparity between the arious sounds: lrench, rom
Rome, in that illage!` Immediately, the disparities between the
auditory possibilities ill the air and seek to create their own place in
the little ca. Immediately the spatial compass needle swings round
its piot, disconnecting the ca rom its secure sonic mooring. 1he
scene, once composed o totally integrated ragments, is shattered
into a mass o disparate elements. \hat is important is not the
material iolence o these sounds that promote a little upheaal in
this ciilised tableau. 1hat`s a conclusion too ordinary, too dialectic,
too easily sunk by simple common sense. No, what`s important
rather, is the inequality implied in the careully structured disturbance
o eeryday perceptions: the ishermen |...| listened motionless.`
1

1he unequal relationship between the heterogeneous ragments puts
the listeners into a mute trance and pushes their hearing aculty to the
limit without abandoning them, like sailors enshrouded by og, in a
perceptual oid. 1he coniguration o the radio program, as it
suuses these alien people, places and things, articulates a new orce
in the relationships here. Radio: a mighty attack on the time-
honoured conentions o the ca.
1he radio demonstrates that the sound enironment is built

16. Arnheim 13-14.
1. Arnheim 13.
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solely by implication, that the relationships between the ragments are
based on their dierences. Lxamining this arrangement, we could say
,i we wished to look at its negatie side, that it is elliptical, ull o
holes and deicient in many respects, but that would underestimate its
supple adaptability, its ery airmatie nature. Rudol Arnheim sums
up this process:
It represents a triumph o the mind that it has succeeded in creating new
worlds o the senses in which actual space- and time-relations are o no
alue, but where the associations o thought o the directing mind decide
what-not only in thought but also in the senses-belongs together.
18

lrench, rom Rome, in that illage!` is an arrangement o
heterogeneous sound ragments that is complete unto itsel. It does
not speak o a process o accumulation on a return passage rom a
lost world, or een show us a uture where it will establish a rame o
reerence, an authentic world. It speaks o a process o implied
dimensions, directions, speeds, iscosities, waxing and waning
currents, a process that is inenting a world o perceptual possi-
bilities. Like Modern painting did. Like silent moies do. Like
audioisual perormances will do.

!"#$%&' )*++&,&-&$&"+

lirst, we must stress that the trance-like state o those listening to the
radio obsered by Arnheim is closely related to his claims regarding
radio, and describes precisely what is at stake with the creation o any
radio program or sound perormance: how to inoke listening in
another way, how to orge new perceptions. By all eidence, these
isherman don`t maintain any intimate and natural relationship with
radio, their listening habits do not dispose them to pay much
attention to the multiple layers o sound occasioned by the
introduction o this oreign language program rom Rome. But aboe
all, we can bet that their strange trance is not eidence o a lack o
culture, not the result o some inability to understand, and is instead a

18. Arnheim 120.
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8
mental state o much greater depth: an actual breach in the sensory-
motor system, a gap through which we may propel a perceptual
assault. 1he trance has not stilted the ishermen`s senses, it has
simply deined, straightaway, the conditions o perceptual inention.
1he trance-like state o the isherman is not a maniestation o a lack
o understanding on their part that could lead them to misinterpret
what they hear. 1o describe the interpretation o this eent in terms
o understanding or misunderstanding would be to aour a passie
idea o listening, thus condemning it to the narrow task o bringing
about a correct response, a correct result presupposed by questions
o identiication, and thus eliminating the elemental orce o
acknowledging the credibility o the real world, where listening is not
a task o applying truth based on recognition. \e incorrectly imagine
the ishermen struggling to interpret lrench and dierentiate it rom
German: 1he new aural education by wireless, which is so much
talked about, does not consist only o training our ear to recognise
sounds |...|. But it is more important that we should get a eeling or
the musical in natural sounds |...|.
19
Not only does Arnheim rewrite
here Luigi Russolo`s art o noises manesto, but he also oresees
Pierre Schaeer`s /01$20, )%()-34, and what will become known as
electronic music.
20

1he sound signals pose a dilemma. Perturbing and captiating,
they orce one to truly listen, to embark upon an exploratory oyage
that is also a sort o initiation. Arnheim`s aesthetic proposition needs
to be heard only once or us to understand that it maintains no
relationship to sound idelity or integration with the world as we
know it. 1o hear it is to aboe all be aced with an experiment in
audition, one that points towards a plethora o new liestyles.
Arnheim distrusts any use o broadcasting that seeks to disseminate a
world made to measure rom the materials o the already accepted

19. Arnheim 35.
20. See Luigi Russolo, 5', 6-4 %. 7%$1,1 ,1916,, trans. Barclay Brown ,New \ork:
Pendragon Press, 1986,, Pierre Schaeer, 5-"$48 #,1 %9:,41 /01$)"0; ,Paris: Seuil,
1966,, lerbert Brn, \ayaring Sounds`, in <',( =01$) !,1$141 =,"($(>? 5', =":%-
<-$4$(>1 %. @,-9,-4 A-B( ,Middletown: \esleyan Uniersity Press, 2004,.
!"#$" &'#()*'+
9
world, that is to say one made rom the arteacts o isual culture and
bourgeois theatre.
21
1he uture o radio will be realised in a new
perceptual state training the listener to concentrate on the
audible`
22
: which will also encompass a musicalisation o our world-
orcing perceptions that transcend common sense and in the case o
radio, literal representation. \hen the orces o global change ind
their realisation in the medium o radio listening, radio itsel ceases to
be a system o retransmission dedicated to maintaining sonic
harmony as an assistant to the social order`
23
-its sole attribute its
capacity to bolster agreement.
1he criteria are thus both iolence and originality. 1his is
precisely what strikes our listeners: they are orced, obliged by a
ormulation o sounds to an exploration o perception, and it is there
that they encounter an opportunity to gain credence, in a new way, o
this world we lie in. lor belie in the world is also that which they
need the most. 1hese sailors, seemingly out o danger on ,"##' -)#.',
hae lost their bearings. As a world war looms and lascist societies
expand, they no longer beliee in where they are, and the ery
mechanism that has directed them to this dispossessed state is also
that which had helped them set a course out o it: their habits, and
those /+)/012 that hae blunted their sensibilities. 1hus, belieing in the
world may result in an arrangement o sounds that allows escape
rom this control o representation, an arrangement that, howeer
insigniicant, will gie birth to a new time-space: 1he new and close
alliance o natural and artiicial sounds will not only create a new
branch o art, but will also bring about a reinement o our
sensibility,` Arnheim insists.
24

lenceorth incapable o remaining moored to a recollection o
how things were, the listener needs to seek new sonic bearings, that
will lead to a change, in a concrete way, in the ery manner in which
they listen, the ery course o their perceptual oyage. 1he radio itsel

21. Arnheim 15, 31, and 35.
22. Arnheim 15.
23. Arnheim 141.
24. Arnheim 34-35.
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11
reerences. A musicality as prodigious as the desire to listen itsel:
1he listener |...| restricts himsel to the reception o pure sound,
which comes to him through the loudspeaker, purged o the
materiality o its source.`
2

A true radio system-apparatus, techniques, personnel and
management-broadcasts a group o sound sensations that hae a
direct eect on the nerous system een i it does not respond with
moement or reaction and remains catatonic. Sensibility and neres
are directly attacked, music becomes an organic part o nature,
pulsating, rejoicing sorrowing, boundless, amorphous.`
28
1his system
does not mix together sounds, languages, cultures, places and
listeners without producing a coniguration that becomes intolerable
to the listener. And it`s precisely because the coniguration is cross-
ertilised by these disparate, highly eocatie potentials that it cannot
remain bound by the constraints o the real world. 1his
coniguration, inorganic and aormal, is a strange thing to hear, and it
orces us into a conlictual use o our aculties. 1he radio puts
together a German song and an Italian speaker. But these uncommon
occurrences don`t conerge in an object deined by the oid: they
presere their dierences. 1hat`s because, i these dierences are
attributed to things, these associations cannot be made without
prooking new dierences. And it is also because, i this system
prookes listening, it does so by obliging a departure rom the
normal sensory-motor blueprints. It is here that radio represents, in
the eyes o Arnheim, an opportunity to inent perceptual istas. By
its concrete application, by an acoustic bridge,`
29
radio is the
occasion o a discrepancy in intensity, o a cognisant dierentiation
between the ragments-lrench, rom Rome, in that illage!`-that
breaches ordinary perception and orces an exploration o perceptual
power. In so doing, radio becomes not only a mediation technique
but also a popular art, a way to rebuild an image o our world and a
way to orge a deeper relationship to it.

2. Arnheim 142.
28. Arnheim 41.
29. Arnheim 195.
!"#$%&'%($) +,-.%-/"(),

12


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But why, or Arnheim, do these radio programs represent such a
perceptual conrontation. Because their elements are not dealt with as
parts o a whole, as mementoes o an eeryday eent. In other words,
certain radio programs eade the logic o representation: the radio
drama |...| is capable o creating an entire world complete in itsel.`
30

But why, o course, do these elements only hae this independent lie
that permits them to intermingle in ways so aried as to constitute
such problematic symbols Because the radio system takes these bits
o music, their melody and words so ery independent o association
with any particular place, yet so ery moing, so supple, and
demonstrates that what they hae in common is that they are
sounds-1he rediscoery o the musical note in sound and speech,
the welding o music and speech into a single material, is one o the
greatest artistic tasks o the wireless.`
31

In doing this, radio uses the sound ragments less or their
attribute o being able to establish empathy with an object and more
or their property as an ininite series o modes-passie and actie
orces o aect and o change. Sound is no longer considered as an
amorphous material that is waiting to be moulded into shape, but like
a dense, dynamic material taut with the tensions o its own antastic
potential. A material and its internal orces: Common to all such
sounds is the chromatic rise in intensity and pitch, the swelling and
increase o strength, and just this is the special expression that such
sounds transmits to us.`
32
It is the sound itsel, when it is chosen and
set into any constituent o a radio experiment, that opens up an
ininity o possible compositions, and propels radio towards a music
o the uture: it should be realised that elementary orces |intensity,
pitch, interal, rhythm and tempo| lie in the sound, which aects

30. Arnheim 13.
31. Arnheim 30-31.
32. Arnheim 30.
!"#$" &'#()*'+
13
eeryone more directly than the meaning o the word, and all radio
art must make this act its starting point.`
33

I, on one o its leel, the radio produces certain compositions,
and orces associations upon the listener that no longer doetail with
a reconstitution o physical reality, it is because, on a deeper leel, the
radio uses all sound ragments as parts o a single and intense
molecular material. Not like radically separated orms and substances,
but like a singular material o ariable intensity transected by tensors.
Language, musical composition, noise: these are the dierent
intensities in the same selection o congruous sound. 1he separation
o noise and word occurs only on a higher plane, undamentally,
purely sensuously, both are irst and oremost sounds.`
34

\hat does it resemble, this deeper leel with its ominous
implications reerred to in the radio experiments that interested
Arnheim 1. At this leel, he recapitulates, oten tiny segments are
appropriated as sound material, 2. 1his material is an energy set apart
to be altered, such as in degree o intensity, o resistance, o
penetration, o surroundings, o speed, etc.: the multiplicity o
oices, harmonious and discordant, raucous and smooth, calm and
restless, nasal and resonant, repressed and open, piping and
booming`
35
, 3. And that which will alter this material will always be
its own energy or the tensors. Arnheim did not call these by name,
but he did indicate a repertoire o compositional methods
,juxtaposition, implication, multiplication, etc., that sum up this
process: to bend or crush, 4. 1his rapport between the actie and
passie energies, this rapport o aect, it is that which we will call, as
Deleuze did, an abstract machine.
Machine because it is a series o joined orces, abstract because
it does not abricate actual orms and substances but potentials or
change.
36
A technological apparatus is not only made o manu-

33. Arnheim 28-29.
34. Arnheim 28.
35. Arnheim 38.
36. Gilles Deleuze and llix Guattari, , -./01'*( 2+'3"/014 &'5)3'+)16 '*(
!7.)8/5.#"*)'9 trans. Brian Massumi ,Minneapolis: Uniersity o Minnesota Press,
!"#$%&'%($) +,-.%-/"(),

14
actured pieces, plastic, aluminium, electrical wires, etc., and o
organisational structures, programs, prototypes etc., but o materials
which hae no orm, that present only degrees o intensity
,resistance, absorption, stretching, speed,, and also o a unction that
is resoled only by the tensors: juxtaposition, enelopment,
interweaing, etc.
\hat are we doing, insisting on the nature o the ragments that
we hae been occupied with up to now 1hey must not be
considered simply as commodities independent o eerything because
they are also intensities that express a rapport between orces. A
ragment o language expresses a wrinkling o sound at a certain
magnitude, a kind o explosion that menaces the ormal expectations
o a language, and orces unnatural links. lrench, rom Rome, in
that illage!,` it is a rapport o resistance, penetration, enelopment,
speed, etc. that leaes unscathed neither the language nor the place.
1his is neither correspondence, nor ormal opposition between a
language, a piece o music and a sound that allow the radio to put
these in ailiation, but common orce o their sounds inluence. And
it is because this power is animated by the olding or the crumbling
that these ragments retain their immediacy and consere all their
singularity. 1he abstract machine does not adance or oppose the
identity o a language or a place-these are but aects that linger
ater the strike, the most triial perhaps. 1he abstract machine
ormulates dierent intensities within the same sound ramework: by
the telescoping o two intensities, there olding up the sound, the
abstract machine steers the sounds identity, ormal and substantial,
the languages and places, toward other conigurations that eade the
ormality o parallels, analogies, oppositions and identities.
In the eyes o Arnheim, a broadcast system thus exhibits a
harmony o precise orces: the bending and crushing o sound at the
same time the ragments resulting rom this are interwoen with all
sounds` own particular spatial and temporal energy. 1he direct
expressie power o a hammered-out rhythm and a sot blurred
sound, a major and a minor chord, a ast and a slow pace, a sudden

198, 511.
!"#$" &'#()*'+
15
or a gradual rise and all in pitch, a loud or a sot tone-these are the
most elemental and the most important creatie means or eery
orm o acoustic art |.|.`
3

But that alone does not suice to stimulate the innoatie in
certain radio experiments. It is in conceiing programs that will bring
about musicalisation o radio that Arnheim reeals his great ision.
\hat concept o music does he conoke or liberating the power o
radio 1hat is the question we must ask, because music could easily
bulwark an abstract machine with a purely abstract unction, one that
would then neer cease to relocate the dierging sounds on escape
routes within resonant structures perpetually being reassembled. An
entity that could be either, mathematical, ormal, harmonious or con-
ceptual.
\hen radio makes itsel a witness to historical eents, when
radio lets us hear experimental programming, Arnheim listens or
things other than the ast echo chamber that will become the world,
it seems to him that aboe all, these eents and experiments
demonstrate the neer ending metamorphosis that conditions the
relationship between sound intensities: inequality. 1hese radiophonic
moments and presentations do not presume to embrace all o
sound`s inluences, they place their circumstance o inequality within
the domain o the undamentals o sound composition. Until the
publication o Arnheim`s essay, radio had done nothing but reduce
distances, accelerate the speed o interactions, and increase the
number o listening points in a space that remained unchanged.
According to Arnheim, radio`s greater task lay in changing the world.
1hat is to say radiophonic systems that indiidualise the world by
repeated dierentiation: with each repetition the world acquires a
new coherence and always a new interactie abric. 1his is because
radio signals are based, by their ery physical nature, upon the
underlying inequality o eery sound excerpt, on associations that do
not repeat without being transormed.
Sounds and speech are not chemically pure` art-products as tones o
music are to a certain extent, they are products o nature and reality. lrom

3. Arnheim 30.
!"#$%&'%($) +,-.%-/"(),

16
this it ollows that they are not strictly deinable. O course the artist
moulds them |.| by stylising them with the help o those musical means
|tempo, intensity, dynamics, harmony and counterpoint|, but there always
remains, unless it is going to result in nothing but a laboratory product |.|.
Rhythm and the ocal line o speech can be modulated, but i one starts
scanning too regularly, boredom is the ineitable consequence!
38

It is, thereore, this continuous transormation that poses the
enigma o the radio signal, the inner dierentiation that compels the
listener. It can be a new way to perceie. But it is not suicient to just
apply the techniques. \e will gain nothing without changing radio`s
nature, physically, mentally, socially and politically. Arnheim`s
enthusiastic message is that with radio the dierence is the medium
o communication itsel: each sound composition appears to be the
result o the transormation o inequalities. 1ransormation is not a
representatie deice, it is a orce that torments our perception. 1he
senses ind themseles conronting a tumult o sound intensities that
can no longer be accommodated within the common orms
bestowed upon an object or a scene by the imagination`s schematic.
1his latter, inspired mainly by the gradual process o indiiduation,
continuously repeated and displaced ,relationships between more and
more discreet sound intensities, the increasingly subtle implications
o their disparate potentials, orced moement rom one to the other
that open gaps in reality
39
,, as the memory migrates within a complex
cosmos
40
and thought too, is repositioned within ininite under-
standing.
41
It is this oscillation, this incessant shit rom one listening
perspectie to another that Arnhiem raises to the leel o a
undamental method when he describes the ollowing radiophonic
eent, one that seems at irst to be a simple usion o opposing
locales.

One o the most dramatic eents in the history o the wireless occurred on
New \ear`s Le, 1931-1932, when the New \ear`s speech o President on

38. Arnheim 33-34.
39. Arnheim 52-55.
40. Arnheim 24.
41. Arnheim 20.
!"#$" &'#()*'+
1
lindenbung was interrupted by Communists: here, unexpectedly and at a
signiicant moment, two extremes o political thought were maniested
directly ater one another, and those opposites seemed to come rom the
same room. |.| It represents a triumph o the mind that it has succeeded
in creating new worlds o the senses in which actual space- and time-
relations are o no alue, but where the associations o thought o the
directing mind decide what-not only in thought but also in the senses-
belongs together. |.| 1hese same eortless leaps in space goerned by the
central thought o the broadcasting oicial can be achieed by the listener
himsel, he rushes rom station to station on his long-distance receier and
abandons himsel to the ectasy o the breadth, the depth and the diersity
o earthly lie |.|.
42


!"# %#&'()(#* +, -"&./#

Arnheim makes a sharp distinction between a placement o locations
in a structure well delineated by cultural beacons and the implications
o the dissimilarities through which the radio signal induces a change
to acoustic space,
43
a moement which telescopes the intensities,
creating dierent unierses and disregarding without inalidating the
distances that separate them: In the sensory zone o audibility which
the microphone transmits to us there is probably no direction at all
but only distance.`
44
On one side, the listener always inds a way to
allocate time-space,
45
on the other, the heterogeneous acoustic spaces
are immersed one into the other.
46
In the ormer, the most complex
compositions will neer go beyond a melange o sounds within
Luclidian space and played out in real time ,mayhap breaking the
mould occasionally by proceeding elliptically or in the opposite
direction,. In the second case, it is accompanied by a new, peculiar,
inisible space |...|`:
4
conlicting dimensions that intermingle without
eer uniying within a larger whole, necessitating constant

42. Arnheim 119-121.
43. Arnheim 146-14.
44. Arnheim 55.
45. Arnheim 99.
46. Arnheim 20.
4. Arnheim 99.
!"#$%&'%($) +,-.%-/"(),

18
permutations and migrations, producing an ambialence appropriate
or the uture, and there, wherein are unresolable probabilities and
inexplicable dierences. |\ou| make countries tumble oer each
other by a twist o your hand, and listen to eents that sound as
earthly as i you had them in your own room, and yet as impossible
and ar-away as i they had neer been.`
48

Now there`s a deinition o a radio signal! 1he expression o an
abstract machine, drien by metamorphosis, product o the inisible,
o the impossible,` indierent to that which has already been its
time, absorbed as it is within a reality continually in the process o
being concocted and obliterated. A machine that also sculpts a
portrait o real, earthly` orms, occupying itsel with arying
patterns composed o only sound in such a way as to render their
maniestation an expression o the magnitude, the implied dierences
,hither and yon, here in the kitchen, and way out there, nowhere, o
orces incorporeal yet neertheless tangible, actie, unseen, yet
entirely earthly,`
49
o the actual occurrences that make up this world
right here. 1hus, through spatial conditions, the original acoustic
equality o all human beings ,as represented by their oices, gies
place to a hierarchy determined by spiritual alues.`
50

1here is another logic that alls into place: or otherwise...
otherwise...` it substitutes and... and...` \e do not actually dwell in
London, or in German olklore, or in our childhood. \e are in an
implied reality o combined London and Berlin and childhood, that is
to say truly in the process by which these singularities are connected
yet do not in any way reconstitute a presupposed whole ,the world,
the continent, my lie, but connect locally-neer globally or
generally-at the moment they are disbursed, to produce an
unimpeded and mutating mass. \e are otherwise not at all actually in
London, or in Berlin or in our childhood. \e are or all intents and
purposes in London, and in Berlin, and in our childhood, that is to
say actually in a process o transormation, and o moement

48. Arnheim 20.
49. Arnheim 6.
50. Arnheim 101.
!"#$" &'#()*'+
19
between singularities that airms as it disconnects, and in that way
entails a mutual conseration o all the distances, physical and
chronological, while neer orming a whole imaginary structure, but
instead assembling the disparate elements, through this process
arriing at a weightless relation that leitates, and in so doing glides
oer the sequence o singularities: een the mere simultaneity brings
about a close contact in the acoustic sphere, because there the
indiidual things do not lie beside and separate rom each other as in
isual space but oerlay each other completely, een when,
objectiely, the sounds come rom dierent spatial directions.`
51
A
macrocosm, most assuredly constructed through this incessant
passage rom one singularity to another within a tacit coexistence, so
as to ollow on without a break, at the same time keeping the
diisions between them clear.`
52

One can well understand how undamental and important is the
contradiction between this sound-space with all its possibilities and the
actual space that always remains equally empty or ull, where there is more
or less constant moement or lack o it, organisation or lack o it, which is
equally harmonious or non-harmonious, and which is, aboe all, static,
constant and without any time element.
53

An experiment with the singular reality o these sound tracks is
essential i one is to ashion a macrocosm such as that. 1o perorm
local connections, inclusie diisions and itinerant combinations, is to
inent incorporeal eects that reassign sound phenomena to another
dimension: a super-realistic leel` where a wireless` link can
directly juxtapose what is arthest remoed in space, time and
thought with amazing iidness.`
54
A sound dimension independent
o the requirement o naturalism: the wireless is not, like the sound
ilm, tied to naturalistic pictures, it can embed a politically height-
ened` speech in a sound world that will not contradict it.`
55
Change

51. Arnheim 121.
52. Arnheim 114.
53. Arnheim 148.
54. Arnheim 119.
55. Arnheim 42.
!"#$%&'%($) +,-.%-/"(),

20
persists: a irtual dimension where dierences are without contra-
diction or opposition. 1he radio system achiees a threshold o
transormation that doesn`t let anything replace this transormation,
neither an imaginary identity nor the structural integrity o the sound
composition. Moreoer, it is the transormation itsel that has the
most direct ainity with these occurrences that quicken or prolong
themseles. 1he sound ragments do not need a larger structure o
the consciousness or a representation o the real world to assume the
appropriate density. 1he mass that they sculpt has the actie
consistency o a process, o migratory mooring points and meander-
ing courses. And yet nothing is lacking! lor the essence o
broadcasting consists just in the act that it alone oers unity by aural
means. Not in the external sense o naturalistic completeness, but in
aording the essence o an eent, a process o thought, a
representation.`
56


!"# %&'()*+(,- ./ 0*1(.

It`s ine to declare that radio, when so compelled, can reproduce the
naturalist sound o the theatre, the eects and the oices that it
transmits are no more obliged to be attached to the physical world
than to our isual or theatrical culture and the perceptual and
cognitie presuppositions that thus ensue. In the eyes ,and ears, o
Arnhiem, radio represents a ictory o a new understanding that has
disengaged itsel rom chronological time and Luclidian space. Lx-
tension in time is a characteristic o the audible, thereore all aural art
|.| hae a time character. Neertheless, we must obsere that within
this period o time there are not only successie, but also parallel
representations, our ear is capable o distinguishing seeral
simultaneous sounds.`
5

But the coming o radio`s uture-music does not coincide with
abdicating the real world, it is the world that will surrender its bucolic
scenes, its raudulent ties to Chronos and Luclid. 1his musicalisation

56. Arnheim 135.
5. Arnheim 24.
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22
a departure rom reality`
60
-because musicalising our world demands
a writing o the real itsel: In this pure aural world, sounds rom
quite separate spheres o the material world are united.`
61


!"#$%&'("#

Radio transmits an incalculable number o symbols that neer elicit
understanding. But, with Arnheim, we must remember that it can
inent problematic symbols, either chronicles in which the narratie
is rendered gobbledygook, or singular experiments that inent whole
ways o liing. 1hese chronicles and these experiments permit us to
determine the interplay o dierences that are resoled in a sound
symbol. It permits us to discern that this interplay o dierences is
the maniestation o another way o perceiing, that gains its driing
orce rom change. And in that sense, we`re orced to admit that this
wasn`t a new` radio technique that Arnheim discoered ater all, but
simply the inborn tumultuous character o the arious kinds o
programming that it is possible to produce, ||or een i, as is highly
probable, teleision destroys the new wireless orm o expression |...|
the alue o this aesthetic experience remains unimpaired.`
62
1he new
reality o radiophonic symbols is still new, with its power o
beginning and beginning again, just as the established was always
established rom the outset, een i a certain amount o empirical
time was necessary or this to be recognised`:
63
wireless, when it
wished to, could beat the theatre at sound realism.`
64
1he perceptual
changes inoked by the new radiophony are o an order outside o
recognition.
Although wireless, when it wished to, could beat the theatre at sound-
realism, yet those sounds and oices were not bound to that physical world

60. Arnheim 159.
61. Arnheim 193.
62. Arnheim 16.
63. Gilles Deleuze, 0$..,-,(), "(# !,&,1$1$%(2 trans. Paul Patton ,New \ork: Columbia
Uniersity Press, 1994, 136.
64. Arnheim 15.
!"#$" &'#()*'+
23
whose presence we irst experienced through our eye, and which, once
perceied, compels us to obsere its laws, thus laying etters on the spirit
that would soar beyond time and space and unite actual happenings with
thoughts and orms independant o anything corporal.
65

In committing himsel to the enigma o radiophony, Arnheim
aoided limiting his analysis to just radio and the rudimentary
technical considerations o broadcasting. Mere multiplication o
points o contact does not lead to the most global depiction o the
world because it is that ery way o seeing it that we ind dislodged
by the sel-same symbols that result rom such multiplication. lor
Arnheim radio is not simply a more eicient communications deice,
capable o extending arther the perimeters o a consolidated way o
representing the world, o multiplying settings and the listening
points in a homogeneous and static unierse because rom
radiophonic eents and experiments emerges the condition-
inequality-that puts these ery phenomena outside homogeneity
and stasis: in the ecstasy o the breadth, the depth and the diersity
o earthly lie.`


,#'*-+'."( /#01 .2" 3#"*42 56 &+'6.0* 7')+"6



65. Arnheim 15.