What is the idea behind the use of radio broadcasts on the soundtracks? Are these the main forms of communication between these isolated places and the wider world?
The use of radio frequencies came as an accident. I was using the radio to listen to some stories that were happening between isolated people in Patagonia, that also was our only way of communication, the telephone somehow. One day I started to film with the radio as a sound source, no natural sound only the radio connected to the camera. I was filming Pool, what I considerer my first Fieldwork, and the pool itself was acting as the antenna as an enhancer of the signals that were populating that place. That experience was key. I understood that radio waves inhabit the atmosphere as much as other sounds, they are an integral part, carriers of information, in a hauntological way somehow, to put it as David Toop says. Of course those sounds would have not mean so much to me if I would have not been fascinated by the work of Joe Banks and of course all the Touch approach to sound somehow.
What is fascinating is that radio frequencies in those isolated places are amazingly rich, due to the military, due to the late reflection of SW signals, and of course due to the position in the geographical sense and isolation. Of course there is a myth that accompanies all these theories about being able to listen to natural phenomena and atmospheric reactions in VLF frequencies. I am not a scientist, that is why that doesn’t worry me, I believe in it.
( The Mire, Interview with Catalan audio-visual artist Carlos Casas )
Camera Edit, with Ambient Sound and Radio Frequencies.
Captured in location. Shortwave radio signals. KHz Range : 5000-8000 AM SW
Shot on location in Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia , in 2002.
