The Night Air
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Motion
We get ourselves in Motion with talks about the elegance and precision of the ballet and the design of the propeller.
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A Spoken Word Remix on the 44th President of the United...
Recorded live in an off-Broadway theatre in New York City, Darian Dauchan’s award-winning work chronicles the period of Barack Obama’s candidacy, to presidency, to the present day – at the time of his second inauguration. The piece is a rhetorical conversation between African-American performance poet, Darian Dauchan, and Barack Obama, now the 45th President of the United States. This solo show consists of live-looped songs, beat-boxing and a collage of satirical poems and presidential...
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Sun Ra: Space ambassador
Sun Ra's visionary Afro Futurist project, begun in the 1940s, provided fuel for many strands of musical culture: he stood with one foot in rhythm and blues, one foot in free jazz and two hands stretched out into space.
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Worn in
These days it's like products, and even humans have their own 'refresh' buttons. The latest model is always on offer. Happy, shiny people everywhere. But permanent 'nowness' can't last - the cracks start to show, eventually nature subsumes culture and everything falls to bits. The Night Air searches for the 'melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things', what the Japanese might call 'wabi sabi'. It's the pleasure of the imperfect, impermanent, incomplete. It's when the new gets, if...
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Resonate
Everything, including you and me has a resonant frequency!
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Out in the Open
Can we gain an insight into people living in remote parts of this country by aiming a shot-gun microphone and collecting audio snapshots? Is media an extension of the human nervous system, or is it a type of 'amputation'?
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Jamaica at 50
We’re in Jamaica to celebrate 50 years of independence from British rule. The Caribbean island may have the world's highest rate of public debt and plenty of problems with corruption and crime but it also has the fastest runners on earth, untold cultural riches and the indomitable will to survive.
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In/visible Palestine and Suleiman's Journey
Walk the separation wall in what was Palestine and take a train trip through long-contested Eastern Europe.
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In/visible Palestine and Suleiman's Journey
Walk the separation wall in what was Palestine and take a train trip through long-contested Eastern Europe.
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Tropical
This evening things get hot and languid as James Vyver takes you on a tour of the tropics.
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Mermaid
Plunge into the ocean's depths where the fabled Mermaid may or may not swim. Real or imagined, fabled or fact, there she is – alive in urban myth and ancientfolklore, her tale as old as religion. She's beautiful, dangerous, sexy, beastly and alluring and just perhaps she really exists.
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Mining Boom Boom Bang: Fistful of Dollars
To just pack your bags and fly-in, fly-out to the remotest corners of this dry continent is today’s version of the Gold Rush. Caught in the crossfire of this mad bonanza, Melbourne-based artist Moses Iten took cover by watching dozens of European Westerns from the late 1960s, the mood of which felt like a strange parallel to the push and pull of the current economic climate. He also dug deep in the archives of Radio National to unearth ancient stories and hyped up myths of this great land of...
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Undergrowth
A shuffling beneath your feet and a rustling of leaves as small beasts scurry about. On the forest floor there's a myriad of wondrous small worlds: mushrooms, tussocks, twines and whipsticks. Tune in, go under.
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Back in the Pool
A program that takes the creative collaborative energy from ABC Pool contributors and weaves it into an audio adventure.
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Slippery
A bunch of critters that slither and slide and get out of your grasp including eel fishing, jellyfish and snakes.
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The bell tolls for thee!
The bell tolls for thee! This edition of the Night Air climbs the belfry to ring the victory bells; we investigate this ancient way of communicating, celebrating, worshipping, keeping time and making music. The Night Air’s resident campanologist James Vyver rings in the audio changes. And we unveil a combination vase, paper-weight and mirror in a glass art mix here on your 'glass half-full' network.
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Visual
In a world of the ocular and photopic we go eye-spying on visual perception in art and arcana: realms of the unseen, the partly-perceived and the imagined.
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Journeys in the Pool
A program that takes the creative collaborative energy from ABC Pool contributors and weaves it into an audio adventure.
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Rural
Come bush, into rural Australia, with a cast of characters from down the pub, out in the shearing shed, around the paddock and over at the school yard.
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Krautrock
Krautrock was a pulse, a spontaneous eruption from the depths of the post-war German psyche, a seminal moment in the birth of electronic music. Bands like Can, Neu, Harmonia, Amon Dl, Faust and of course Kraftwerk coalesced around a common desire to take rock music beyond the blues into a realm of pure improvisation and experimentation. In the process they became sonic prophets, messengers from the future. Tom Morton and Timothy Nicastri take to the autobahn.
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Replicas
An evening of replication, and things which exist as pairs, in twos and as mirror images.
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Noir
The Night Air in classic Radio Noir mode
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Howl
Can a wolf be bad? Can a dingo be a culprit? Or are these really projections of human fear and fascination with the darkness in ourselves? Werewolves, dogs wild and domestic, kinship, love and extinction with fragments of Ginsberg’s text for the beat generation, HOWL.
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Motion
We get ourselves in Motion with talks about the elegance and precision of the ballet and the design of the propeller.
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Hetero
Exploring the complexities and mysteries of heterosexuality as lust, morality, regret and pornophonic pop drag us into a two-step through the mating minefield.
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The Graveyard
Meet us at midnight at the graveyard gate where foul miasmas swirl and emotions run high.
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Space Doubt
This evening is Space Doubt. We're exploring Doubt as well as Space as we travel from the lunar voyage of 1969 to the European Space Agency's current search of deep space.
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The Wisdom of Jay Thunderbolt
Meet a dangerous yet wise man from America's underside.
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Library Music
In the shadows of pop music and on the industrial side of film soundtrack composition there’s the world of ‘production music’ or as it’s also known, ‘library music’. Composers and session musicians, often uncredited, create music to be used in the media – film, TV, radio and online.
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Radioversary
To celebrate the creation of the ABC as our national broadcaster on the first of July, 1932 the Night Air team ransacks Aunty’s archives for moments of hilarity, horror, and historical ephemerality.
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The B Side of Switzerland
Swiss-Australian artist Moses Iten recently travelled around the tiny nation of Switzerland by bus, train, plane and steamship, along the way digging in record stores for forgotten classics, cult jewels, experimental gems, and interviewing some of the artists behind music Made in Switzerland. Moses introduces us to the likes of a man who spent ten years recording the sounds of steamboats; a spaghetti western soundtrack composer; a son of yodellers who is a well-known dancehall producer; and...
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Shine a light
This evening The Night Air Shines a light on the hidden histories of Australia’s lighthouses.
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Holiday
For everyone who's on one or who wants to go on one - we're on a tour around various locales and taking in the sights. There's a musical journey in Europe with a virtually organised group, there's an exotic island - of course - and we discover what it means to take a dream holiday in someone else's nightmare. There's even a story about not wanting to go away at all - Let's Go Home, by Natalie Kestecher. Plus there's August in New York - it's when all the psychiatrists head out of town for...
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Egypt
From the revolutionary protests in Tahrir Square to the ancient temples of Abu Simbel come on a tour through Cairo’s chaotic traffic back into antiquity.
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Conflict
The Night Air meets the beast that allegedly no story can do without - conflict. While we're riding into the battle we also hear that far off voice that says, 'none of this is necessary...defuse, resolve, live'. It's a thoroughly conflicted edition.
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When the Arkestra came to town
InJune2011TheSunRaArkestrarolledintoMelborneforthethatcity'sInternationalJazzFestival. Itwasthefirsttimethemusicalemissariesofthespacejazzpioneer,SunRahadreachedthispartoftheplanet.
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Learning to be dead
We can never actually know death... we can only imagine.
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Activate
Putting the demo back into democracy. As traditional political options wither we re-consider the art of activism andmeet some of those tough visionaries, feralphilosophers and rowdy ratbags who despite all odds hold a passion for change.
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Psyched in
Have you ever stopped to think that you don't really know how you got where you are now?
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Vinyl Retentive
As digital technology continues its rendering of the entire planet into hi-res simulacra there are still hold outs - rebels who insist on the lingering charms of ‘outmoded’ formats - like vinyl records.
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Shopping
Shopping has it all - labour exploitation, weird science, ugly packaging - contemporary products reach us with all sorts of strings attached. This evening we present a guide to surviving 21st century shopping without your moral compass spinning too wildly. In fact, just relax and listen to that lovely supermarket muzak. In the golden aisles of The Night Air mall you can hear the sound of violins...
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Brazil
It was the French leader Charles de Gaulle who infamously said, ‘Brazil is not a serious country’ - but we take it seriously (and not forgetting to break into a joyful samba from time to time). Music and dance are intrinsic to Brazilian culture - in 1940s America Carmen Miranda embodied both and every year Carnival explodes in a frenzy of sound and movement - and in Brazil somehow soccer mixes with samba to produce the unique, world-beating style of 'futebol'. Discover some of the myths and...
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Tropical
This evening things get hot and languid in The Night Air as James Vyver takes you on a tour of the tropics.
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Tread
Once upon a time, stepping into this continent was one of those small steps for man.Especially when The Little Desert got stepped on—you could easily miss it even though it held numerous species of wildlife.This evening we try and tread lightly—and we ponder about the moon—was man the only potential wildlife there?
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Slow
In the furious pace of today’s wired world it’s sometimes necessary to change down a few gears and alter your perceptions of time’s passing. This evening we consider the seductiveness of slow.
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Displaced
We’re taking to the street in search of the various ways people are displaced. Squatters, buskers, refugees and other eternal wanderers.
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Dark Pool stories
This evening the Night Air is telling audio stories of darkness as found on ABC Pool.
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Voodoo
The voodoo you do possesses us all. Moses Iten digs deep into Vodou music and pulls audio fetishes from dark hiding places to conjure up tales of Zombie Makeup and the pin-pricked ragdoll of Voodoo Economics
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Tribute to John Blades
John Blades was a tireless champion of 'marginal' culture. We pay tribute to the radio producer, disability advocate and tape loop artist.
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Radio World
To celebrate UNESCO’s World Radio Day the Night Air gets ethereal and tunes into the spectres of the spectrum.
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Really Rare
Extinct, disappearing or just highly elusive, we’re on the trail of the antique and the apocryphal but also an almost mythological beast like the Tasmanian tiger – has it gone or is it just hiding.
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Identities
The Night Air explores Identities - Indigenous and otherwise.
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Vectors
Following lines in the sand, puzzling about crop circles and looking for the geographical and psychological markers that keep us right on track with magnitude and direction.
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Birthday wishes
It's time to celebrate! Whether it's your birthday or a remarkable day in history, in this party edition we're celebrating famous birthdays, speeches, people, places and historical moments in times. So put your glad rags on, turn it up and make a toast to Birthdays & Anniversaries. Hip Hip Hooray!
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Forest
In this evening's Night Air we're seeing the forest and the trees!
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2011-11-27 Graffix
Its about having a quick doodle, chatting with the inventor of Bugs Bunny and the inventor of Ren and Stimpy. Theres also a chat with people who scrutinise handwriting to see if someone can be trusted, and theres a bit of manga, a bit of graffiti, a visit to the tattoo parlour and a little bit of boop boop be doop, Betty Boop. For music details please click on Show Transcript
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2011-11-20 Lost Australia+Ship Ahoy!
Musician and producer, Kevin Purdy trawls the dusty archives to find ways of reanimating nagging memories of Australian social rituals now consigned to history. And The Night Airs information consultant and librettist, Wayne Funnell inaugurates Radio Nationals Operatic Theatre of History by presenting Ship Ahoy!- The Tragic tale of the Historic 12th Fleet to Van Diemens Land, a dramatic and powerful rendering of a long neglected episode in Australian history.
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2011-11-13 Sombra Verde and Taman Negara - UPDATED
Brisbane-based field recordist and sound artist Lawrence English takes us deep into the jungles of the Amazon for a poetic account of the environment. We also visit Malaysias Taman Nagara national park in the company of some rowdy tourists, insects and wild animals who combine to create the `symphony of the forest and we listen to the sonic portraits of master Brazilian field recordist Johan Dalgas Frisch. For music details please click on show transcript
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2011-11-06 Time
Time ... perforated perceptions of the past? The inconceivable potential of the future? The impossibility of grasping the moment? Sure, all of the above but what is time to us? It shapes us - by turning up ripe, rotten or premature. We will time to turn back, speed up or stop. We fantasise about a world where time has no power. Yet the clock ticks on, with or without you.... A show made in collaboration with producer, Kyla Brettle and students from RMIT University in Melbourne; Sarah Bell,...
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2011-10-30 Birth and Age
Part 1: Birth Birth is about the new: bellies, babies and beginnings - and it's about re-shaping the old: nations, belief systems, spiritual wellbeing. Either way it's a process - sometimes joyous and uplifting - and at other times painful, bloody, tough and relentless. Part 2: Age If you happen to be a fossil, a magnificent building or even a turtle, considerable age is a much-prized feature. So why doesnt that always apply to us humans, who spend time and effort in trying to stall the...
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2011-10-23 Jargon
Attempting to come to terms with some of the memes, schemes, tongues and jive of everyday language - we get an ear across the patois of science, CB radio, traffic control and rock and roll. LOL. Ten Four.
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2011-10-16 Worn in
These days it's like products, and even humans have their own 'refresh' buttons. The latest model is always on offer. Happy, shiny people everywhere. But permanent 'nowness' can't last - the cracks start to show, eventually nature subsumes culture and everything falls to bits. This evening we look for the 'melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things', what the Japanese might call 'wabi sabi'. It's the pleasure of the imperfect, impermanent, incomplete - when the new gets, if not...
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2011-10-09 Family
In this edition of The Night Air, we're keeping it all in the Family. We'll look at the individuals within the family, including Grandma and her memories; we'll listen to the way families communicate, the language and the rules; and we'll hear the stories of some well known family dynasties such as the Fairfaxs and the Carters. So come on in and join the family.
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2011-10-02 Clean
This evening we clean up. We recall what and who was swept under the carpet before the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games. We take advice from the Queen of Clean, learn about the politics of 'home help' in South Africa and with Lady MacBeth in tow, visit a hospital to try and get that damn spot out. It might take more than hand washing.
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2011-09-25 Night Air Live: Radio Stories+Freak Pride -...
The Night Air team respond to the bubbling flux of Now with a live mix of conversation, comment, found sound and music. This evening producer Jesse Cox from Sydney's FBi Radio talks about All the Best, the show devoted to the Australian story telling and our favourite self-proclaimed freak, Kath Duncan takes us to the decibel performance showcase in the UK - where diversity is strength. For music details please click on Show transcript
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2011-09-18 Curvaceous
The problematic issue of where we are and when - it's perhaps a great continuum ... relatively ... sometimes. Anyhow, well attempt to squeeze everything in, including the body clocks, pineal fluctuations, bundies and soft watches. For music details please click on 'show transcript'.
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2011-09-11 Last Night in New York + 50 Years of Humans...
We return to New York City in the hours immediately after the devastation of the Twin Towers attack and trace the emotions of New Yorkers over the following days in Last Night in New York by Wednesday Kennedy. We also commemorate 50 years of human space flight. 1961 Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. This evening producer, DJ and founder of the Melbourne-based Afro-Space-Dub ensemble, The Cumbia Cosmonauts, Moses Iten takes us into orbit with a multitude of...
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2011-09-04 In the field
We travel to some wild and sonically rich environments for a programme of immersive listening. Poetica presenter Mike Ladd takes us into the realm of Found Sound - the haunting and evanescent music of streets, rivers and backyards. And we journey with master field sound recordist Chris Watson (former member of pioneering `industrial group Cabaret Voltaire and the man who makes David Attenborough documentaries sound so good). Locations include the Antarctic and the Galapagos Islands and...
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2011-08-28 Night Air Live: The internet + bespoke music
The Night Air team respond to the bubbling flux of Now with a live mix of conversation, comment, found sound and music. This evening theres Dutch theorist on the internet, Geert Lovink, the revolutionary sound of young Adelaide in the Shaolin Afronauts ... and a Melbourne festival of hand-made musical fun. For music details please click on Show transcript
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2011-08-21 Can we just be friends?
As we discover ourselves in the era of Facebook-style `friendness some of us begin to wonder just what friends are for. This evening we try to consider those relationships which bind us together ... or otherwise. We recall departed friends, best friends, ambiguous friends and forgotten friends in a super-friendly edition of the show. For music details please click on Show transcript
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2011-08-14 Elevational
Tonight we're going up ... getting into the elevator alongside the Muzak, having an uplifting experience in a Manhattan bra shop, delivering services within a building, and in the feature Tall Girls, we wonder if you can be too tall. for music details please click on Show transcript
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2011-08-07 Trips
Travelling ... sometimes on foot and sometimes by rail, float tank, balloon and armchair. We sit in the jump seat of a Marauder aeroplane as it executes a mission over Germany, we take a walking trip on the outskirts of London, we review the history of rail travel - and visit the head space of those who almost never leave the couch, man. For music details please click on 'show transcript'.
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2011-07-31 Night Air Live - Housing the Situation
In this edition of the show an interactive sonic city, Bloomsday shenanigans, Mexican-American Kraut/Psych rockers The Mars Volta in conversation and an extended chat with the McLuhan Project thinker-in-residence, McKenzie Wark whos talking about those near-mythical revolutionary bohemians who went digging for the beach under the pavement - the Situationists.
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2011-07-24 Transit wave
International and inspirational - we present a `rough guide to Phonography -the art of recording sounds from the environment that surrounds us. We also present the work of artists exploring sounds intrinsic to broadcast on radio. From the seminal works of Stockhausen, Cage and Tenney through the culture jamming theatrics of Negativland and into the psychological minimalism of John Duncan, radio has served as an invaluable and expressive tool within the continued history of avant-garde...
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2011-07-03 Jungle
Is it just us or is it getting hot in here? And where are all those snake vines coming from? On a trip deep into the jungle we trek along some partly-worn paths and create a few inroads of our own, pushing aside the carnivorous plants to look what might be lurking underfoot and swinging overhead. John Hughes `On Language http://www.abc.net.au/rn/linguafranca/stories/2008/2226392.htm All In The Mind: Your Inner Ape http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2008/2187798.htm Ambush, by...
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2011-06-26 Night Air Live - Sonar Deli
The Night Air in live mode on Radio National were on a music and sound trip this evening... visiting Spain's Sonar festival, hearing from the creator of a video harp, crate-digging on the net for rare 45s of earthquakes and seeing what tasty sounds we can get at Radio National's Deli.
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2011-06-19 Keys and Combinations
Discover who invented the lock and the key needed to unlock it. Visit a key museum in Paris, the Florida Keys, Circular Quay in Sydney, the QWERTY keyboard and the keys on a piano. Later we key into and combine the Fibonacci series, the Fourier series, The Name of the Rose, and Finnegans Wake. For music details please click on 'show transcript'
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2011-06-12 Landscape
Be lured away from your comfort zone and travel into unfamiliar territory to experience landscapes through the sounds of traditional landowners, explorers and colonialists. Join Christopher Columbus, The Melbourne Underground and Buzz Aldrin on a mixed up journey of unparalleled proportions. For music details, click on transcript below.
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2011-06-05 Vocal Chords
In this Night Air we open the voice box to strum the many chords of the voice. Our vocal symphony includes passages on the theory of the voice, the electronic voice, the singing voice, the synthesised voice, the musical voice, the voice-over voice, the accented voice and the haunted voice. The legion of voices rises in a cacophony of notes, vibrating in tune to The Night Air.
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2011-05-22 Hybrids
Hybrids might be a class of their own or perhaps theyre just a real mixture of happy accidents and sometimes unhappy mistakes which go to make up a menagerie which includes a Tasmanian tiger, the mule and the goudad. for music details please click on 'show transcript'
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2011-05-15 Singing the Revolution
This evening - music and social change. Twenty years ago Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians joined hands and emptied their lungs in mass singing demonstrations which toppled oppressive regimes. In 2011 young insurrectionist Arab musicians expressed themselves in tracks posted on the internet, inspiring producers in Australian to create their own revolutionary mixtapes. And we recall a soft musical uprising when country met soul and young southern whites in the US embraced peace, love and...
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2011-05-08 Musicality
Do we have a natural connection to music? Can it be healing, energizing and something which comes naturally to us all? Chaotic and messy, calm and meditative - join us on an emotional roller-coaster ride of sound in this therapeutic edition. For music details please click on 'show transcript'.
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2011-04-29 King Thynge
Reflects on the essences of monarchy in three continents: Europe, Africa and Asia, especially those intangible, ineffable qualities that separate kings from the rest of us. For the 'King Thynge', Tony Barrell drew from a variety of sources, texts and audio contemporary and ancient: the last words of Charles I on the divine rights of kings, Edward VIII on his abdication, Prince Philip on why the colonies like royalty so much and some brief asides from that most secular of all modern kings...
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2011-04-24 Style
Whether you choose them to create a different identity or are obliged to don them to identify with a group, clothes tell the world something about yourself. Join us on the discovery of skirts for men, airline branding, fashion dolls and that icon of 80s fashion, Leigh Bowery.
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2011-04-17 Listening In
This evening we are exploring the theme of listening by asking what is listening? We'll get hear some not so simple answers from Oslo Davis a professional eavesdropper, various ear mechanics and a couple of people with unique perspectives on the world of sound; a former music retailer Greg Hartney, who suffers from nerve deafness and radio broadcaster Glen Morrow who is legally blind. Brain waves, sound waves, shock waves....radio waves - angels and angst, memory and message. For music...
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2011-03-27 Light and shade
A flick of a switch and then there was a show about the humble light globe, the fluoro tube and that old ultra-violet. But on the flip side we contrast with talks by photographers whove been able to manipulate the dark as well.
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2011-03-20 Surfin' the air with Jimmy Dibble
Celebrating a great Australian media voice while at the same time tuning into his lesser known flip side. From it's gala opening night in 1956 James Dibble presented the ABC TV News in Sydney for 27 years, becoming one of the most recognisable and loved faces on Australian television. Sadly, James passed away late last year but this evening his voice is in the air again as The Night Air presents a special retrospective tribute. Back in the nineteen seventies the otherwise straight laced ABC...
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2011-03-13 Post-Human
One day in the future, living with robots might be the most natural thing in the world. But how come Japanese people are already able to welcome such machines into their society? This evening we meet scientists, writers and robots to explore the looming Post-Human world. Scientists like Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro at the cutting edge of robotics and writers like Donna Haraway and William Gibson express their hopes and fears about a future in which the lives of humans and robots are...
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2011-03-06 Rubber
T his flexible commodity stretches across the globe from South America and thence to India. We follow the story of this substance which helped to reinvent the wheel and the pneumatic tyre pump up the wheels of industry. Please click on 'Show transcript' for music details.
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2011-02-27 Royal
What's missing from the political agenda? You might say most things, or nothing, but the Queen's Birthday weekend might be the right time to remember that, yes, we do have a monarchy and so do a lot of other people. Why? Ask Tony Abbott. Yes he's in the Royal Night Air and so is the King of Swaziland the Emperor of Japan – and that fascinating family of TV-watchers we know as the Royles. Come for a Right Royal show and see how the other one half of no per cent get along. For music...
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2011-02-20 Rhythms of Life
Tonight were surrounded by rhythm. Finding the music in speech, taking the pulse of our every day activities and opening up to the rhythms of life. From the most intimate bodily cycles to the enormous waves of change that transform our world. music details: Track: Millions of musicians Composer: Tony Schwartz LP titlet: Millions of musicians LP label: EMI 743 8 57010 2 3 Artist: Tony Schwartz Track: Sparkys Magic Piano Composer: Alan Livingstone CD title: Sparkys Magic Piano CD label: EMI...
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2011-02-13 Elephant and Castles
Elephant and Castles is a record label investigating and cultivating a field in between documentary, field recording, unusual sound practices and delicate music. Curator Cdric Anglaret is our sound guide. Using reality as a raw material, always oscillating between the extremely concrete and the abstract creating imaginary places through a non-pictorial narration, getting close to what could be a cinema of sensations where images are made up by the public's own imagination. Image by Gilles...
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2011-02-06 Resonate
Just by simply twiddling the dial youre allowing your radios tuning circuit to resonate with Radio Nationals carrier frequency and thereby extracting all manner of juicy sounds. There are wires, strings, tubes, voices, drums, not to mention the infinite variety of spaces we occupy in our daily lives - and did you know that everything, including you and me has a resonant frequency? Please click on 'Show transcript' for music details.
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2011-01-30 Animals
Some fine-feathered and four-legged friends get some air time and give us some clues as to what being an animal is all about ... pampered pooches, gambolling gorillas, singing pigs and lions with largess. The featured rant on Quadrepedism is by Theodore Gottlieb. The Night Share mix is Hidden Beak Funeral Bird, by Jen Saunders For music details see transcript
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2011-01-09 Mud brick
A trip to the brickworks and youd be amazed at the variety. Plus, digging in the mud to try and grasp the shifting terrain that we sometimes call history and later, a classic building re-discovered through a study of the Australian dunny. For music details please 'show transcript'.
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2011-01-02 Papua New Guinea
To begin the new year we return to our closest neighbour - Papua New Guinea. It's a place synonymous with the Australian campaign in the Second World War but now rather far off in the Australian imagination. We listen to the voices, music and sounds of this incredibly diverse and dramatic country. For music details click on transcript.
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2010-12-26 The biff
Go a few rounds and be the better for it. Shape up and take on all comers with archival extracts from the bare-knuckle days and hear the commentators' and trainers' side of the story. A no-holds-barred edition - from punishing amateur fights to the grace and violence of the champion Kostya Tszyu. The ABC Radio feature The Fight Game, by Sharon Davis, was originally broadcast on Radio Eye on 12 September, 1993 The ABC Radio feature Black, White, Blue or Brindle, by Dave Chesson, was...
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2010-12-19 Stuffit!
Are we eating better? Do we eat too much? Or do we just think watching gourmets on television is enough? Tony Barrell takes a global tour of eating establishments from Turkey to Japan, Korea and Russia to see if the fad for food culture is hiding something wed rather not know about.
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2010-12-12 City Nights
The stars may not be so bright in the sky but in the city, at night, there are other lights to guide your way. Tonight were stepping on to the bitumen, pacing down the concrete footpaths and committing ourselves to the big smoke, through documentaries uploaded to our media sharing site Pool, as part of the City Nights project. The City Nights project called for tales of the city at night, in any media, including photography, video, documentary, text and spoken word poetry. Over 360 pieces...
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2010-12-05 Fidelity
Treasures of gramophone history spin through this history of sound recording. Tangles of audio memories are sieved and reconstructed. Youll hear Tennyson trapped in beeswax from 1890, Edison on a roll, Sarah Bernhardt acting Phdre, and a rider from the charge of the Light Brigade. Catch the scraping and buzzing of the needle - remembering the surface in The Night Air. For music details click on transcript link below
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2010-11-28 Die Wende - the turning point
As the finale of Radio Nationals Berlin Waves festival The Night Air tunes into The Turning Point or Die Wende in German. In the mix of highlights from the festival and the archives will be ideas of reunification and change as explored by major European artists in sound, music, poetry and performance. Expect surprises as the art and ideas of Kafka, Stockhausen and Rilke engage in a lively sonic debate. For music details please click on 'show transcript'.
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2010-11-21 Bike Love
This evening were exploring the wide ranging, ever spinning and sometimes deeply emotional relationship that can develop between riders and their bicycles. In the build up to Melbourne's Bikefest, we'll hear tales of bike couriers, cycling activists, psychogeographers and joyful chain-turners. We also take a ride into the dark and curious side of cycling: accidents, road rage, cycling sub-culture clashes and velo-porn. So prepare for a two wheeled wonderland edition of Bike Love. For music...
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2010-11-14 Paranoid Parade
In the first part of this evenings show we take a nervous shuffle down a Cold War cul de sac. In the second part Sydney's confused soca punks, Gallucci deliver a peculiar mixtape exploring The Lighter Side of Paranoia. From watching the waistline, to adolescent lady worries, all angles of this humorous and primarily male twinge are opened up for pot shots and low brow hubbub. Theres music from Hot Snakes, Minutemen, John Coltrane, Faust, Suicidal Tendencies, Deltron 3030, Daniel Johnston and...
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2010-11-07 Testify
Feel the power of the word! From the pulpit, from the gutter and from the fiery depths of hell youll hear the hyperbolic music that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. Were testifying! For music details click on transcript link
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2010-10-31 Undergrowth
A shuffling beneath your feet and a rustling of leaves as small beasts scurry about. On the forest floor theres a myriad of wondrous small worlds - mushrooms, tussocks, twines and whipsticks. Tune in, go under.
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2010-10-24 Radio rethink
Net radio, podcasting, low-power FM - new ways of making, transmitting and receiving radio are booming. But the media revolution isn't all about new tools; its about radio as exchange. Its about people power and new ways of thinking through old problems. Take a tour of tomorrow's radio with the radio artists as guides: do-it-yourself geeks and activists, IT entrepreneurs, policy directors, and poets who are rewriting the rules. We'll catch up with the recent Particle/Wave conference in...
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2010-10-17 Body music + Soul
That tingling, harmonic minor-scale sensation down your spine, the boom-boody-boom as your heart beats and the clanging in your head all add up to a great symphony made on, around and within the body. And once the excitement of your own musical self settles a bit you can begin your quest for true Zen, have your soul saved by gods (of many persuasions) and find that special soul mate. Youll witness the divine funkiness of the godfather of soul James Brown, take in the gospel from the Reverend...
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2010-10-10 Secrets and lies
From a very young age we're taught to keep secrets. Families are full of them - the sister you never knew about, the money that went astray - but secrets are also a part of public life too, such as dog-whistling speeches and the activities of spy agencies; even gay politicians who, by tacit agreement, are not exposed by journalists. Political spin and advertising is also a kind of socially sanctioned lie. Half-truths whispered, exposed and discussed in this secretive edition. For music...
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2010-10-03 Refuge
Even in a our new political paradigm `the refugee issue looks set to be a favourite football for politicians and the commentators for some time yet. This evening we'll take in some of the voices in the debate in Australia as well as listen to the actual stories of people who risk everything to find safe haven. For music details please click on 'Show transcript'.
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2010-09-26 Crafty
From the macram basket to the crochet doily to the ceramic thingummyjigs holder, crafters are always on the go and no textile or substance escapes them. So long as theres a click of knitting needles or snip of scissors then everyones happy and you put your wool around and pulling the stitch through. This evening we run up a frock and gather our yarns for a craftilacious edition.
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2010-09-19 Quacks and Age
Part 1: Quacks This evening we check pulses, monitor vital signs and open up perceptions of health and medicine to see what sorts of snake-oil and charlatans crop up. Hypochondriacs are advised to eat more chocolate and some patients in America are prescribed anything they've seen advertised on late-night television. We'll also learn from Oliver Sacks how the right tune can hold the key to recovery and just how William Chaucer defined a good physician. Part 2: Age If you happen to be a...
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2010-09-12 Metamorphosis
The Body Farm is the name of a research facility at the University of Tennessee - a workbench of forensic science, monitoring processes as nature does its work - and tonight we visit this institution but were also inside a large building - a corporate corpse - where a mysterious death has minions and managers speculating on the anatomy of an organisation. Along the way we duck in to the rabbit holes of Alice in Wonderland and sample the revitalising powers of the great outdoors. For music...
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2010-09-05 Towns
All around the houses, up the street and down the road: including a chat with urban planners and with those who live at `ground level, we visit Hull, the north-east of England seaport that once voted itself first place in The Book of Craptowns. Rupert Murdoch's News of the World called it 'Hell on Earth', but Australian poet Peter Porter has described it as `the most poetic city in England. For music details please click on 'show transcript'. For music details, please click on 'show...
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2010-08-29 Coloured
Red and yellow and pink and green ... can you sing a synaesthetic rainbow? This evening its hues and palettes, taints and traces, skin pigments and the many colours in between.
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2010-08-22 Cones, rods and tubes
Cones of silence, rods of connectivity and tubular bells, this evening there are things light and dark, visionary and diaphanous as the cathode ray tube meets the Delphic oracle; were enticed by a glimmer then embrace the lambent glow - in the company of Alice as she ventures right through the glass into a reflective meta space of TV.
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2010-08-15 Dunera
The myths, the legends, the outrageously true stories - The Dunera was more than a ship which steamed to Australia bringing 3000 internees during World War II, it was old Europe and new Australia, high culture and desert internment camps, the loss of hope and the beginnings of optimism. Get aboard The Dunera with us.
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2010-08-08 Beyond therapy
If you've been through the psychic mill and emerged with your shattered ego in a small brown carry-bag, where do you go to have fun? Some Karaoke Counselling or a bit of Life Coaching perhaps? Enjoy some post-therapeutic activity once you've finally managed to pull yourself together.
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2010-08-01 Uniform
Most of us have probably felt the desire to get away from it all, to retreat from the rat race and contemplate. For most people it remains just an occasional dream but other people do indeed turn their backs on worldly attachments and become solitaries, living to the power of One. For music details please click on 'show transcript'.
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2010-07-25 What the flock?
This week in your weekly audio adventure on Radio National, we're talking about group dynamics, crowd behaviour and herding. What makes groups of fish, birds or antelope all manage to turn left at the same time? A secret signal: a prod, an opinion, a convergence - and something groups inevitably respond to as they approach critical mass? Listeners should be warned that this programme contains actual recordings of an ostrich race. Running with the pack in The Night Air. For music details,...
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2010-07-18 Flighty
Chocks away, engage propeller...contact! Up, up and away into the Night Air. This evenings program traverses an intercontinental idea span. Youll hear rare archival recordings of intrepid men and women aviators recounting true life ripping yarns. Get a glimpse into the queer history of the mile high workplace. And find out how people can become obsessive collectors of airline safety cards and ...barf bags? Oh well, just time for a quick glance at the old altimeter and then wed better be...
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2010-07-11 Out of place
Whether you're playing Bartok on a wind up gramophone to Balinese villagers; a woman with one leg in a world where legs come in pairs or a middle aged man eternally hitchhiking to a place he hasn't found yet. Whether you're searching for your place or happy to be misplaced, you're out of place. For music details, please click on 'show transcript'.
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2010-07-04 Bedtime
Now I lay me down to sleep ... plump up your pillow, rest your head and prepare for a brace of bedtime stories that will take your mind nearer the mystical land of nod. Wistful, weird and wise words (and music) for those moments before dreams.
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2010-06-27 Birth
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2010-06-20 Unforgettable
In the Night Air we try to remember what it was like to forget: dj vu and nostalgia, amnesia and mnemonics, implanted memories and oral testimony, we tie a knot in our handkerchief, take a sprig of rosemary and dive deep in the river of oblivion, exploring the twin human virtues of memory and forgetfulness. `For all human history, remembering has been hard and costly, while forgetting was easy. Today with digital tools its the other way around. Digital remembering is the default these days...
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2010-06-13 Royal
What's missing from the political agenda? You might say most things, or nothing, but it the Queen's Birthday weekend might be the right time to remember that, yes, we do have a monarchy and so do a lot of other people. Why? Ask Tony Abbott. Yes he's in the Royal Night Air and so is the King of Swaziland the Emperor of Japan and that fascinating family of TV watchers we know as the Royles. Come for a right Royal Night Air and see how the other one half of no percent get along.
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2010-06-06 Stranger
This evening were speculating on the predicament of the stranger. We tag along with those who look at home life from outside, maybe dont want a home as such, or maybe they just need a home where its OK to be strange. Strange days and stranger nights. For music details please click on 'read transcript'
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2010-05-30 Paradise
What is paradise - and would we know it if we found ourselves there? Today dreams of paradise are shored up by the crazed plans of mere mortals to get there, while those who appear to already be in paradise explain the reality of their situation. For music details click on transcript.
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2010-05-23 Something in the water
Get your wet suit and diving gear together for a little trip down under — in the company of French naval officer, explorer and pioneer of the aqua lung, Captain Jacques Cousteau. As well, well wash away our ailments in a spa, investigate the underwater city of Atlantis and imbibe some sparking mineral refreshment. For music details click on transcript.
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2010-05-16 Sleuth
Sifting through bagloads of forensic data, matching up fingerprints, clues and motives, deducing whatever they can, those sleuths are on our case. Who knows what evil ... lies in the hearts of The Night Air as we accompany a clutch of famous detectives, investigators, cops and villains. For music details click on transcript.
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2010-05-09 Country
A show on the meaning of landscapes and how they call to us and how they make us travel, perhaps to experience the simple pleasures of a package holiday somewhere else. On a more dangerous level we hear from front line soldiers whore asked to die for their country and then theres country in its purest form: the sound of nature; finally a word from the man in black - Johnny Cash. Whether were leaving or going back - theres always country. For music details please click on 'show transcript'.
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2010-05-02 Living Music
Australia is hosting the International Festival of Living Music, a showcase of sound art and music from around the world and were drawing on its radiophonic collection to create a series of tableax that find the life in music. A co-production with ABC Classic FMs New Music Up Late program. For music details click on transcript. Hear see and read more about sound art and new music at: www.abc.net.au/classic/iscm2010 Living Music festival website: www.worldnewmusicdays.com.au Image The...
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2010-04-25 Papua New Guinea
This ANZAC Day we explore our closest neighbour - a place synonymous with the Australian campaign in the Second World War but largely now forgotten by Australians - Papua New Guinea. Well listen to the voices, music and sounds of this incredibly diverse and dramatic country. Image credit kabl1992 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kabl1992/2889715392/ For music details click on transcript.
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2010-04-18 Vectors
Following lines in the sand, puzzling about crop circles and looking for the geographical and psychological markers that keep us right on track with magnitude and direction. For music details please click on 'show transcript'.
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2010-04-11 Cave
An audio exploration of the cave of the imagination. We head down a drain with the Cave Clan and then uncover the early words and songs of Nick Cave the gothic diva of the underground. For music details, click on "transcript". Image credits: Public Domain at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Resavska_pecina.JPG
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2010-04-04 Babylon
This Easter Sunday evening come on an audio adventure with the Night Air as we visit Babylon. The ancient city is also place near modern Baghdad. It�s laden with religious associations of The Beast and Apocalypse - and if that�s not enough Babylon may also be a state of mind ...
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2010-03-28 Rubber
Stretching from east to west across the globe following this flexible commodity from South America and thence to India. It's the story of a substance which helped the pneumatic tyre pump up the wheels of industry.
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2010-03-21 Theatre
We�re watching the limelight and taking our seats at the theatre ... there are famous and the not so famous characters stomping the boards and breaking a leg on stages around Australia and abroad. Actors, playwrights, directors - even the theatres themselves instruct us on acting, projecting and creating a presence. Take your places please for this thespianistic review. Please click on 'Show Transcript' for music details: Music details Pt 1: Track: One Leg Too Few Composer: Peter Cook &...
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2010-03-14 A trouser amongst blue jeans #6
As an undercover operative at the ABC's `youth frequency�, 2JJ, Barry Mortlock Anthony introduces another synapse-snapping episode of the remarkable series to which he contributed in 1979 - Watching the Radio With the TV Off. Click on 'show transcript' for further details. And in Part 2: Our resident audio excavator and scientician, Wayne Funnel, takes us on a dig through his vinyl back archive. He�ll be dropping the needle on all sorts of oddities and treasures. Expect to be profoundly...
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2010-03-07 A trouser amongst blue jeans #5
As an undercover operative at the ABC's `youth frequency�, 2JJ, Barry Mortlock Anthony introduces another synapse-snapping episode of the remarkable series to which he contributed in 1979 - Watching the Radio With the TV Off. Click on 'show transcript' for further details. And in Part 2: The weird tales and tunes of Mr Tom Waits in a programme of `Glitter and Doom� take us into the dark, lovely night.
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2010-02-28 A trouser amongst blue jeans #4
Recalling his past as an undercover operative at the ABC's `youth frequency�, 2JJ, Barry Mortlock Anthony introduces another sense-shredding episode of the series to which he contributed in 1979 - Watching the Radio With the TV Off. Click on 'show transcript' for further details. And in Part 2, Beach Crossings: From the depths of the sea to far distant shores, stories of Pacific navigation recalled in myth and history are often about the meeting of very different people. The wonder, fear,...
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2010-02-21 A trouser amongst blue jeans #3
Remembering his days as an aging newcomer trying to blend into an exciting broadcasting laboratory, Barry Mortlock Anthony brings us another episode of Watching The Radio with the TV Off. Produced by Tony Barrell, Watching the Radio was something like an early model for The Night Air - able to present arcane links between diverse examples of recorded sound and tell rattling good yarns at the same time. In this evening�s episode three fabled zones are brought together - the flooded world of...
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2010-02-14 A trouser amongst blue jeans #2
This week one-time corporate voice of Dubai and noted 'trouser', Barry Mortlock Anthony, continues his guided tour through the wonders of the 1979 radio h�rspiel (cinema for the ears) series Watching The Radio with the TV Off. The possibilities are limitless... Click on 'show transcript' for further details. And in Part 2, In The Heat: When the temperature rises, coastal Australians turn to the beach and tonight the heating's up on the ocean floor, in the Perth suburbs and on the Sydney sand.
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2010-02-07 A trouser amongst blue jeans #1 + Highway
In 1979 radio producer Barry Mortlock Anthony was at a loose end. He was well into his 30s and uncertain about his future but strangely attracted to some `maverick� broadcasts emanating from youth station, 2JJ. He had heard the series Watching The Radio with the TV Off made by Tony Barrell and was fascinated enough to get in touch. And in Part 2 of the show, a little trip out on the highway, taking in the Silk Road and going to Perth via San Francisco. Click on 'show transcript' for further...
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PROGRAM INFORMATION
- Sydney, NSW
- Documentary
- ABC (Australia)
- English
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Night Air
GPO Box 9994
Sydney 2001(02) 8333 1315 -
Visit the station website
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