WHY RADIO

    Robert Horvitz
    written on 5 August 2000
    
Two life-changing events got me interested in radio.  Both 
happened in 1979. The first was a strange and lucky accident.

I was staying with friends who just moved into a new apartment.  
They hadn't yet unpacked.  One evening they went out, leaving 
me alone and suggesting that if I could put the components of 
their stereo system together, I could listen to records or the 
AM/FM radio.  That sounded like a good idea and not too 
difficult.  But somehow I connected things wrong and when I 
turned on the amplifier, only a faint hiss came from the 
loudspeakers.  I tried changing the configuration of cables 
until there was a slight change in the hiss:  new sounds that 
were too faint to recognize - music?  voices?

I turned up the amplifier's volume to the maximum and put my 
ear against a loudspeaker.  The voices and music were just 
barely audible.  One of the cables I had incorrectly connected 
apparently was acting as an antenna, and later I realized that
the AM/FM radio was somehow picking up a wide section of the 
shortwave band - not just one channel, but dozens, in too many 
languages to identify, layers of sound overlapping, emerging 
and receding as each station's signal varied in strength. 

It happened to be about 8 PM.  At exactly 8 o'clock every 
station chimed or time-pipped, played their theme music and 
started the news:  "It's midnight, Greenwich Mean Time.  This
is All India Radio...  headlines from Voice of America...  
coming to you from Radio Havana...  Kol Yisroel..."

It was overwhelming:  hearing humanity ALL TOGETHER at the
same time.  I had never even imagined that was possible.
I knew shortwave existed, that it brought news and programs 
from other countries, direct and unfiltered.  But until I 
actually heard it - and heard much of it simultaneously, which 
is not the normal way to listen - I couldn't really appreciate
its significance.

I had been planning to buy a shortwave receiver anyway, 
because the other life-changing-event-of-1979 was on the 
horizon:  I was going to Bulgaria for 3 months with a US 
Government-sponsored art exhibition.  It would be my first trip 
outside North America.

Remember that in 1979 we were in the depths of the Cold War -
which seemed alot like a prelude to hot war.  Leonid Brezhnev 
was still head of the Soviet Union.  Bulgaria was one of the 
most isolated countries on Earth.  Foreigners were only allowed 
in as part of an officially-invited group.

"The Artist at Work in America" was the name of the exhibition.
It was organized by the US Information Agency and included
some 3 dozen pieces by Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, 
Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, etc.  Part of the 
idea was having a "real live American artist" travel with the 
exhibition, giving demonstrations and lectures every day.  
John Coplans, the former editor of Artforum magazine, had 
recommended me.

Because I would be behind the "Iron Curtain" for so long, it 
seemed like a good idea to bring along a portable shortwave 
receiver, for contact with the outside world.  It proved to 
be a virtual lifeline.

Soon after we arrived in Sofia, Russian troops invaded 
Afghanistan and Jimmy Carter suspended our cultural exchange 
agreement with the Soviet Union.  From one day to the next we 
didn't know if we would be ordered to pack up immediately and 
go home.  I was glued to my radio.  At the same time, Marshal 
Tito, the long-time leader of Yugoslavia, entered the hospital 
with a terminal illness.  Every hour guards at the exhibition
(most of whom were draft-age Bulgarians) piled into my office 
to listen to the BBC.  They wanted to know if they would be 
sent to "liberate" Macedonia (with whom Bulgaria had a long-
standing boundary dispute), just as their older brothers had 
been sent to "liberate" Czechslovakia in 1968.

Seeing how much access to shortwave meant to them - they 
didn't trust their own media at all - and how much it meant to 
me, too - led to a complete rethinking of my priorities when I
got back to America.  I wanted everyone to know about shortwave.  
I went back to teaching contemporary art courses (at MIT and 
RISD), and of course I continued drawing, too.  But more and 
more of my time was devoted to writing about radio, learning 
its history and technology, tuning around for new stations and 
signals, and contributing regularly to the "Media Network" 
program on Radio Netherlands and the "Review of International
Broadcasting."  

My radio interests gradually expanded to include spectrum 
management, the politics of communications regulation, radio 
astronomy and SETI, lightning and solar weather, radar, mobile 
networks, etc.  It seemed important to understand the 
electromagnetic spectrum AS A WHOLE, not just the small window 
we call seeing.  After all, we are the first generation of
people able to access the entire spectrum.