The paintbrush microphone

In 2002, Silvain Gire founded Arte radio ("reportages, témoignages et bruits pas sages"), a radio on demand website produced by a small team. "Arte radio", Silvain Gire says, "is a box of chocolate" - no music, no format, no photos, but a dedicated web-based feature channel. Every week there are three to five new productions, either to be podcast or downloaded.

Producers (from beginners to professionals) are paid for the productions, but Arte radio basically being a website there are no distribution costs. Young authors are being trained until their ideas have turned into feature projects. In the end the pieces are free for education use, as well as for non-commercial broadcasting. Gire: "We believe in radio as an art form, and we use the microphone as a paintbrush to do a painting of the world".

Gire else presents the award-winning project "Á l'abri de rien" (nowhere safe) having won the Prix Europa 2011. "À l'abri de rien" is a web documentary on shockingly poor housing conditions in France which 3.6 million people are suffering from. Samuel Bollendorff and Mehdi Ahoudig did the deep research, careful to keep the respect for the men and women who opened their doors to the cameras. "À l'abri de rien": 15 three-minute stories told in breathtaking photos and monologues.

Nutshell: Kaye Mortley

“But there are several other things, as well as all the rest.

because these nutshells are all talking about so many different things, all at the same time.

first there is broadcast, or rebroadcast.

rebroadcast on the web is all for the good for the listener.

perhaps for the author there is the problem, evoked by others, of letting one's work "go"...

but it is a lovely and very proper idea for this sort of airy work.

in a sense I have always thought that this was what radio was about.

however, in some countries rebroadcasts do help to supplement the author's (small) earnings: web rights are really very small, if at all.

perhaps some authors will fall by the road financially because of this.

perhaps that's the way the cookie crumbles.

perhaps it doesn't matter.

or does it?

but

broadcast on the web... making for the web... this is where I really begin to wonder...

on internet, we can re & /or broadcast the same things as a radio station.

or the same sort of thing.

only shorter or faster or more amusing or funnier or "younger" or ...

this is not really internet specific, it has nothing to do with the aesthetics of "writing in sound" on internet... or the deontology of the problem to hand.

it is exactly the same sort of issue as broadcasting an electronic music composition (already a recording in concert form) on the air waves: it is only the support changes which changes.

no, the real question is not there.

anyway this has already been done on a lot of radio stations.

the real question is:

is there an internet specific type of product(ion)?

a product to be found?

what?

and why?

how?

and which will be made in what conditions?

and who is going to pay for these internet specific productions (except for Arte Radio and SilenceRadio.org and a few others I don't know about)?

and what are the public broadcasting services who still (even though we sometimes choose to see them as shortly to be dead and buried) going to be doing while all the (frustrated, and possibly impoverished and isolated) radio creators are trying to produce "something"- in conditions as yet undetermined, their own digitally equipped garrets and garages- to make a feature in the digital age."

Kaye Mortley, freelancer, France

Nutshell: Silvain Gire

“My nutshell is at ease with most other nutshells: yes, Internet has successfully created new audiences and new paths for radio documentaries (or crafted radio in general). The audience is listening deeply, in a way that is for me similar to the act of reading: alone, concentrated, breeding mental images. And they can now listen to our stuff other and other. This creates an understanding of the art of editing, of how sound narratives work. This allows us to build an access to a library of features, which encourages a new generation to learn and practice. This is why, for me, audioblogs, festivals and the teaching of radio are very important.

Problem is: there is no money! In France, only France Culture and ARTE Radio do actually pay for radio creations. I personally receive three to five demands every day, and can only produce about 120 sound pieces a year… So yes, webdoc is an important gateway for crafted sound (and I agree with Thomas Weibel, "Nowhere Safe" which we helped to produce is a pefect example: www.a-l-abri-de-rien.com)

Because we must be true and straightforward: not a lot of people do actually care for crafted radio ! I know my bosses don't... It is a long process, expensive, requires craftmanship and is not very flashy or glamorous. Facebook may be cool for promotion, but you don't listen to a 50 minutes-long radio feature on it. So, here are a few personal thoughts:

• public events like listening sessions are cheap to organize, fun and successfull in the long run. It is a slow but guaranted way to promote our art.
• time is essential: you can have the craft and ethics of a documentary in a three-minutes piece, and THAT goes well on Facebook. Formats don't work on the web. Traditional radio formats are killing creation, and they are killing us.
• the audience is king, not the author: down with the boring, self-serving, 70's avant-garde höspiel, narcissistic monologues ! We have to be challenging, interesting, funny, provocative through the course of a short or a long piece. Not selling our soul : that can mean time, silences, beautiful voices, strong characters BUT ALSO noises, brutal editing, changes of rythms, multitracks mixing, etc.
• we have to learn from new tools: I now agree with hidden microphones, which were against my ethics at first. We can blend well-crafted"classic" recordings and impure, brutal sounds from telephones or personal devices. We have to find new ways of telling stories. And we can only hope that a new generation will shock us with a "crafted radio" that is not the one we grew up with, or the one we actually produce."

Silvain Gire, Head of Arte Radio, France

Nutshell: Kaye Mortley

“These eclectic pieces (woven of sound, silence, music and words) which we call "radio features" (possibly for want of a better name, so diverse are they in form, content and intention) are finding a new place in the world in the age of the web. No longer will they pass in a moment- "the real time" of their actual duration- leaving no other trace than the imprint left on the ear (and the sensibilities) of the listener who happened to have tuned in when they were floated out onto the airwaves before disappearing, perhaps forever, into some cupboard or other, more sophisticated and official archival system. Still fleeting by their very essence, they are yet becoming immanent in terms of the accessibility which internet offers...

And one wonders just what this implies... for the author, for the piece, and for the listener.

And this is one of the things I hope to reflect upon during the time of the think tank."

Kaye Mortley, freelancer, France

Nutshell: Irène Omelianenko

“Some mini-nutshell from Paris.

All these words related to crafted radio: documentaries, features, horspiel, creation...

This feeling in prizes as Europa, Italia, URTI, Longueur d'ondes (in Brest) than we are a small team in the whole world on the same road made of voices, sounds, humanity, composition... 

When we broadcast it is also to reveal to someone ear the secrets lying under the sounds, there is a topic, perhaps a story but also a mystery. "Thunderclap and sound of wings " to quote René Farabet.

It's a place where soul is beating, where the path is elaborated to share a creation.

Today documentaries may have a life outside of FM broadcast, in Radio France we offer podcast during seven days and listening in streaming on our site during 500 days.

These documentaries are making for some of our listeners a sound library. And we try to make it by adapting author's right with the french society called SCAM.

http://www.scam.fr/Portals/0/Contenus/documents/repartition/BarèmeRadio.pdf

At the same time we feel that we are hurried up to make fresh proposals, to marry ourselves with internet, with i phones, with or without pictures?, with or without interactivity?, to change our formats, to go faster as is supposed going the world. We feel somme mutation is waited.

There is also 5.1 and binaural diffusion.

I just comme back from a presentation by our multimedia department of a piece of sounds made in Tlemcen , registered in 5.1 and diffused with drawings.

Are we ready and do we want this metamorphosis.

Sorry for my bad english."

Irène Omelianenko, Radio France, France Culture, conseiller de programme au documentaire à la création radiophonique, France