Sweet Wreath - Speaks!
Zine & Radio Ecology Log
32 pages
2024
Created by Julianna Richey and Jasper Lee for the Sweet Wreath Speaks! Radio Art Festival. An edition of 150 were given out for free at the festival. Each zine contains a packet of approximately 20 milkweed seeds for planting.
A second printing of 100 copies was made in early 2025 for students at the Alabama School of Fine Arts as part of Two Centuries Later, a show by Jasper for the school’s Vulcan Materials Gallery. The show included a recreation of the bamboo radio tower used at the Speaks festival.
The zine contains a radio ecology log, an interpretive tool madefor observing and thinking about your local radio environment. While making the zine, we listened to the radio from Railroad Park andwrote down what we heard on every station. Beyond the familiar hum of top 40 & commercials we found some rare sounds that were exciting, hidden on unknown channels. Written in the charts are some of our favorite descriptions of sounds heard or imagined during exploratory listening sessions. We found this activity to be like the situationist act of détournement (rerouting). This seemed like a way of regaining lost territory...the territory of communications and sound (and land) that belongs to the collective of all life. Currently the radio doesn't speak to us very much. Radio could be more free-form, more adventurous and alive. It is a medium, a tool to be used by the imaginative hand in unthought of ways at any time. There is waiting potential for radio waves to carry the voices of the diverse actuality that is the ecology of local culture. How often do you hear Korean music on the radio? Or Native American music? Or poetry? Radio waves are important because they shape the awareness of people. There is much more sound, music,life and culture that people can share & connect over, on a peer-to-peer level through this technology. For the Speaks! project, we want to direct our ears & voices to the land and its creatures through the power of sound and broadcasting. Listen thru the dial and add your own thoughts!
Zine & Radio Ecology Log
32 pages
2024
Created by Julianna Richey and Jasper Lee for the Sweet Wreath Speaks! Radio Art Festival. An edition of 150 were given out for free at the festival. Each zine contains a packet of approximately 20 milkweed seeds for planting.
A second printing of 100 copies was made in early 2025 for students at the Alabama School of Fine Arts as part of Two Centuries Later, a show by Jasper for the school’s Vulcan Materials Gallery. The show included a recreation of the bamboo radio tower used at the Speaks festival.
The zine contains a radio ecology log, an interpretive tool madefor observing and thinking about your local radio environment. While making the zine, we listened to the radio from Railroad Park andwrote down what we heard on every station. Beyond the familiar hum of top 40 & commercials we found some rare sounds that were exciting, hidden on unknown channels. Written in the charts are some of our favorite descriptions of sounds heard or imagined during exploratory listening sessions. We found this activity to be like the situationist act of détournement (rerouting). This seemed like a way of regaining lost territory...the territory of communications and sound (and land) that belongs to the collective of all life. Currently the radio doesn't speak to us very much. Radio could be more free-form, more adventurous and alive. It is a medium, a tool to be used by the imaginative hand in unthought of ways at any time. There is waiting potential for radio waves to carry the voices of the diverse actuality that is the ecology of local culture. How often do you hear Korean music on the radio? Or Native American music? Or poetry? Radio waves are important because they shape the awareness of people. There is much more sound, music,life and culture that people can share & connect over, on a peer-to-peer level through this technology. For the Speaks! project, we want to direct our ears & voices to the land and its creatures through the power of sound and broadcasting. Listen thru the dial and add your own thoughts!
