Frequency-Modulated Scenario
What difference does it make if a newspaper reports on a worker protest as if it were a theater piece? Why does an argument in the neighbors’ apartment sound like a radio play? When was the term Lebensraum decolonized? How can Little Red Riding Hood get hold of the copyright for her own character? Who dresses up as whom in order to belong to what group? What happens when not much is happening, but lots of airtime has been scheduled for news broadcasts? At a radio station called The Listener’s Voice, freedom of speech is supposed to be guaranteed by a computerized moderator taking listeners’ calls. Yet, the moderator was not only programmed for an unplanned architecture of discourse that sprawls into environments of potential violence, ambiguous sexuality, and rowdy beauty, but also to make identifying data anonymous. Double-sided, invisible, and acoustic masks are at work. Cyber-radio comes into conflict with human memory.
