The following posts on Radio Project are related to the ongoing project about the art of radio. The idea is to get a sound piece to be broadcasted on RESONANCE FM, composed alongside my colleagues. These posts are meant to be reflections made after the sessions taken once a week with Dr. Dawn Scarfe and Dr. Ed Baxter.
The topic being analyzed in the first session is an assertion by Bonny M. Miller – “The Pictures are better on the radio” – concerning a 1997 radio program/documentary broadcasted on BBC R4 called Touching the Elephant. It is a social experience influenced by an Indian parable (Blind men and an elephant), where blind people try to describe an elephant by touching it so they can “picture it”.
Reflection:
The Touching the Elephant experience is rather a very genius idea, as it transfers the listener to the world of the imagination and non-tangible and full of propositional realities. Its broadcast gives the non-blind a sense of momentaneous blindness when deciphering which parts the voices are trying to describe. But the whole experience of listening to the radio gives you that lack of space that your brain tries to fill. In this matter, the program only emphasizes more the sensorial capabilities of radio listening. Pictures are better on the radio – I might agree to some extent. This phrase has a positive connotation to it that sounds imperative, but I disagree. I think there’s a constant battle between sound and image. Sometimes they become one and artists call it audiovisual, and sometimes they act separately and recurring the other to sustain themselves (e.g when photography transmits a lot of sounds and vice versa). In The Emancipated Spectator, a book by Jacques Rancière, it is discussed how the image has a leading role in societies beliefs and opinions, related to the artist’s intuitions, which I agree, but I think the existence of both should be more introduced in our lives than it normally is through more differed artistry content. Pictures aren’t better on the radio. Pictures are good on the radio.