ANTIVIRUS
!Make some domestic noise!
Track II
on ∏ Node
!Make Some Domestic Noise! was a series of collective online performances that took place during the first COVID-19 lockdown. They featured what might be described as an online domestic noise big band. As everyone was isolated at home, the ∏ Node collective launched the Antivirus program to train people on how to join and contribute their own stream and sounds.
Being alone at home can be stressful, but it can also reveal the beauty of everyday noises.
On a weekly basis, people were invited by email to participate by playing with the noises of their domestic appliances and live stream the results. These separate audio streams were then mixed in real time and sent to the main output stream. This was enabled by the ∏ Node site structure, which provides a volume control for every active stream. The website also has an Internet Relay Chat through which participants can, and did, directly interact.
∏ Node
∏ Node (pronounced pi-node) is a hybrid radio/stream platform that broadcasts on the web and across Paris and Mulhouse on Dab+. Supported by a collective of artists and structured on a unique distributed model, it produces and broadcasts varied and demanding content and spreads by means of workshops on radio creation and streaming.
The workshops are led by members of the artist collective who work to keep the station alive and develop it in different forms related not only to radio but also to sound arts, the plastic arts, and digital technology.
ANTIVIRUS Radio
∏ Node adapted particularly well to the COVID-19 pandemic from the very beginning. Π Node ran a communal ANTIVIRUS radio and hosted concerts, performances, conferences, colloquia, and festivals thanks to a large number of enthusiastic participants.
“An open deconfinement radio program, ANTIVIRUS was relayed through electric cables for 100 days, from March 12 to June 22, 2020, to turn this moment into a translocal radio struggle. Confined of the world, unite!
Despite the sanitary and political anxiety induced by the lockdown, ANTIVIRUS has been an opportunity to invent, to create, to try things out, and to bring us closer together.
We have helped over 200 people to make and stream their radio productions and performances, and we feel that we’ve come a little bit closer to the symmetrical, horizontal, molecular, and independent radio that we dream of.”
Sarah Brown (idea and realization)
A video artist and performer, Sarah Brown has been exploring video media since 1996 via analogue and computer-based devices. She began her work within the free party scene, where she initiated the search for a language that links images and sounds. She has collaborated with many artists and dance and theatre companies (Cie Vent de Sable, Fabienne Gotusso, and Hey! La Cie) and since 2015 has been part of the radio collective ∏ Node, for whom she conceives participatory sound performances and produces various programs.
Valentina Vuksic (one of the performers)
As artist researcher, Valentina Vuksic is working with sonic-cyber entanglements through surveillance practices. She has a background in computer science as well as experimental media art and has been performing with audified soft- and hardware since 2007. She is doing a PhD in Musical Composition at the University of Birmingham in collaboration with the Institute for Contemporary Art Research at Zurich University of the Arts. She is a member of the artist collective π-node.
