This programme features a new commissioned sound work by Alastair Galbraith:

[ Coordinated Universal Time ]
The times of various events, particularly astronomical and weather phenomena, are often given in "Universal Time". In civil usage, Universal Time usually refers to "Coordinated Universal Time" - the system by which all the world's clocks are set. It is based upon the time on the 0 degree longitude passing through Greenwich, England, home of the now-closed Greenwich Observatory. Many radio stations broadcast Coordinated Universal Time signals, allowing listeners to accurately set their clocks. The BBC began transmitting time signals in 1924, and since this point a variety of specialist time broadcasters have been established, many broadcasting in the Shortwave range.

Alastair Galbraith has utilised these broadcasts as the basis for his project for i s o l. His piece incorporates three half hour Shortwave broadcasts of standard Coordinated Universal Time. Galbraith is fascinated by the way in which the broadcasts are decontextualised as soon as they are recorded - the time signals can only be accurate and relevant when heard 'live'. Once recorded and played back out of their live context, the chiming ticks can no longer be used to set watches and merely become rhythms.

Galbraith has also noted that it becomes obvious during prolonged listening, that these minute and hour announcements are prerecorded. When they were recorded the time signals were false, destined to only become accurate at a future point in history. Galbraith also ponders the accuracy of the time signals from a receiving perspective. Questions arise as to how long the shortwaves take to travel from the transmitter to the receiver - do the 'ticks' arrive fractionally late in remote locations?

Galbraith is also investigating the relativity of time. [ Coordinated Universal Time ] muses on the nature of the broadcasts intended purpose - to coordinate and standardise time itself.

Galbraith has utilised the Coordinated Universal Time broadcasts as a rhythmic backing track, to which he has aesthetically intervened by adding a droning loop of a vocal recording, and a range of other shortwave samples.

In relation to [ Coordinated Universal Time ], Alastair writes:

"i left it long for hypnotic reasons
i've loved playing with shortwave at night out here
at taieri mouth
waiting for the dark
when the tide of shortwaves comes rolling in
i love the ephemerality of the time announcements
the weather warnings
contrasted with the endless tick
the rhythmic atmospheric hiss see-saws."


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Note to [ Coordinated Universal Time ]:

Intially Alastair Galbraith planned to hire or buy a very sensitive shortwave receiver and record non man-made sounds from a remote South Island location, such as Kaikoura. He planned to take the resulting tapes to the Physics Department at Otago University to discover exactly what caused each sonic blip, squeal or hum. The sun, and even the planets in our solar system create noises across quite wide bands of the shortwave spectrum. The object of Galbraith's intended project was to attempt to uncover the sounds which the planets in our solar system make.

Galbraith discovered that the the earth is one of the loudest sources of natural radio emissions in our solar system, broadcasting a tone that coincidentally is the same frequency as an un-earthed hum. He also discovered that what he had been planning to do was essentially to use a weak radio receiver as a radio telescope. Realising that a very large array, or some other multi-million dollar installation would do a much better job, he decided to change tack with his project.

Galbraith commented: "I read that radio telescopes were made to represent radio transmissions as visual material. I am left wondering if the great radio receiving telescopes have even been hooked up for sound in the last 50 years. Perhaps some astronomer will one day release the c.d. I would have loved to make."

Coincidentally, r a d i o q u a l i a's project for i s o l, Radio Astronomy, utilises sounds intercepted from our solar system using a large radio telescope based in Latvia.