CONDUCTION SERIES: THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION Betsey Biggs: Friday, October 2, 2026 This is all obviously simplified and made to fit a musical journey but I hope it tells the broader story. In many ways, it’s about noticing and embodying change. Performance notes: we should not all move together into each new era; rather, we should drift and evolve through this as life did. Also, I don’t think it should build up the entire time. I think moments of quiet, perhaps just the hydrophone, might build suspense and a more complex structure. I trust us to feel this out. PART I: EDIACARAN (635-538 MILLION YEARS AGO) Vibe: Peaceful, hypnotic, slow All life underwater, no predators, soft-bodied immobile creatures - Hydrophone recordings underneath everything - Undulating low frequency drones - Warm pads fading in and out (with low-pass filters, should be gentle) - Sounds should fill the stereo field but be immobile - Verbs: drift, float, breathe, bloom, immerse, hover, linger Animal names to whisper/vocalize: Sea Sponges, Crawling Worms, Jellyfish, Dickensonia, Kimbarelle, Charnia (CHAR-nee-a), Spriggina (sprigg-IN-ah) PART II: EARLY CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION! (538-525 MILLION YEARS AGO) Vibe: Subtle movement, gritty sounds and friction Animals begin to move and burrow through the mud, micro-armor appears - The drones from Part I continue - Scraping and scratchy organic sounds - Squelching mud, gravel, clay - High frequency piercing clicks and tings (insects?) - Slow pans - Verbs: burrow, crawl, scrape, emerge, dig, scuttle Animal names to whisper/vocalize: Sea Sponge, Jellyfish, Crawling Worms, Burrowing Worms, Trilobites (TRY-loh-bites) PART III: PREDATORS! (525-515 MILLION YEARS AGO) Vibe: Activity gets more frenetic and fluid More oxygen in the ocean results in much larger and complex animals filtering oxygen through primitive gills and skin; the first eyes create predator-prey relationships. - Earlier sounds continue - LFO filtering white noise beats for animals filtering oxygen thru bodies - Fast and fluttering sounds panned quickly throughout stereo field - Sharp snaps and clicks panned quickly throughout stereo field Verbs: hunt, stalk, detect, pursue, flutter, snap, strike, ambush, flee Animal names to whisper/vocalize: Sea Sponges, Jellyfish, Crawling Worms, Burrowing Worms, Swimming Worms, Trilobites (TRY-loh-bites), Opabinia (oh-pah-BIN-ee-ah), Anomalocaris (uh-NOH-muh-lo-CARE-is), Haikouichthys (hay-koo-ICK-thiss) PART IV: MONSTROUS CACOPHONY! (515-505 MILLION YEARS AGO) Vibe: Aggressive, industrial, intense The height of armored giants, scuttling scavengers, and other weird predators - Earlier sounds continue, perhaps with some slowly moving single pitches representing floating jellyfish - Scuttling clicking sounds overlapping with one another - Glitched out radio static and alien synth attacks! - Heavy grinding loops - Panning and dissonance at their height - Verbs: swarm, collide, overwhelm, multiply, crush, erupt Animal names to whisper/vocalize: Sea Sponges, Jellyfish, Crawling Worms, Burrowing Worms, Swimming Worms, Spiny Worms, Trilobites (TRY-loh-bites), Opabinia (oh-pah-BIN-ee-ah), Wiwaxia (wih-WAK-see-uh), Anomalocaris (uh-NOH-muh-lo-CARE-is), Marrella (muh-RELL-uh), Hallucigenia (huh-LUSE-ih-JEEN-ee-ah) PART V: CAMBRIAN SYMPHONY (505-485 MILLION YEARS AGO) Vibe: Integrated ecosystem where all earlier sounds have achieved more regularity and balance The chaos of the Cambrian explosion slows down, the major groups of life forms have evolved into a stable ecosystem and a unified groove - Earlier sounds continue, but lose their frantic edge, and blend into a unified groove - Violent panning becomes more regular - All movements start to become more rhythmically integrated - Verbs: respond, circulate, repeat, interweave, synchronize, balance Animal names to whisper/vocalize: Sea Sponges, Jellyfish, Crawling Worms, Burrowing Worms, Swimming Worms, Spiny Worms, Trilobites (TRY-loh-bites), Hallucigenia (huh-LUSE-ih-JEEN-ee-ah), Wiwaxia (wih- WAK-see-uh), Pikaia (pih-KYE-uh), Conodonts (KON-oh-donts), Brachiopods (BRAK-ee-oh-podz) PART VI: FOSSILIZE The last several minutes begin slowly dissolving into an intense long reverb that turns everything into a drone, ultimately so long that it all sounds like a fossil. Verbs: converge, settle, layer, suspend, dissolve, remain

No Pressure To press, from Latin premere: to squeeze. From it come op-press, de-press, im-press, ex-press. It happened to me that I hear "no pressure" the way some people say... as the atmosphere weighs nothing... as is the words weighs nothing... Whenever you can. No rush. It's nothing. A hand on my back that passes for a caress. And I also thought about a translation into sound ..wich is a travelling difference of pressure, and the p of please is a burst of air against a diaphragm of a microphone , for example. I though we can bring two things: 1) a lexicon of relief ... the phrases people use to lower the pressure they're applying in the same breath......which pop when read close to the mic; and maybe also a compendium of "proposals" or "questions" that we feel as something ejercing pressure. you are forty, it's interesting you decided not to have children and 2) sound pressure as material: the plosive as a blow, compression flattening everything, ssilence. Some stories can carry speech, others a few words, others only sound. A boiling kettle, the life of a volcano, a football match... or just a chord transition, pressure and release. We can organize the broadcast in Three movements: equilibrium (no pressure), accumulation (increasing pressure) , release (...) . It would be nice if each of you imagine a narration with this structure ... however you want, it could even be a harmonic transition .... or a dialogue, a poem, a text . Live, we mix it into a single breath. No pressure.

The same as last month, only slower.

On Friday (July 3), I'd like to align our broadcast with WGXC's upcoming pledge drive theme: Slow Down Tune In. We (Meredith, Bianca, Caroline, I) were inspired by the Slow Media movement, which takes a cue from the Slow Food movement. Recipe: 1) Choose one very simple thing that makes sound. If you choose your flute and want to play a phrase, the phrase should only contain 4 notes or less. 2) Practice doing that thing as slowly as you can. Perhaps you will only play those four notes twice during our 58-minute broadcast. 3) Fill the hour with your one sound. Don't take a break. Do that one thing, very slowly, for the entire broadcast. It's fine to play a chord or a polyphonic something. 4) Practice doing your slow thing continuously for 58 minutes. My plan is for there to be as little temporal variation as possible, but timbral variation BETWEEN EACH OTHER is good. Do not vary the thing that you do. Do one thing very slowly and fill the hour with that one thing. Become bored.

Definition: A eucatastrophe is a sudden turn of events in a story which ensures that the protagonist does not meet some terrible, impending, and plausible and probable doom.[1] The concept was created by the philologist and fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", based on a 1939 lecture. The term has since been taken up by other authors, and by scholars. /// I will come up with a blurb + flyer soon. As far as score I am not feeling having something rigid at all this time around. I would just say that given the current shape of things, the brutality of this neocolonial push on south america (and the global south in general). The apathy and total uselessness of NATO, UN and all other excuses and strong condemnations. The total corruption to the bone of every state, politician and humans in general. The only hope I have for the worst species ever to inhabit the solar system is a Eucatastrophe, either for us humans to wake up and smell the coffee and take down the apparatus that is ruling over this matrix or one for the whole other species of life that inhabit this Earth are on the verge of extinction due to our presence and utter stupidity. So, I summon thee to connect with whatever gives you hope, be it human extinction at a faster pace, alien intervention, global awakening towards love and not hate, knowing that eventually everything will be devoured by the Sun or probably much nicer thoughts than these mental doom loops. Sound wise I do not wish to over-control or propose something too specific, like I did for 4th of july show last year. Nevertheless I would suggest harmony, drones, nature, soft voice, song, .... Also, please if possible find a phrase or text related to this that you would be willing to share, either with you own voice or for other voices to activate during the session. Tuning into hope within hopelessness.

Since the first Friday in May is the 1st I propose "May Day daymay" as the title. May Day has a variety of different histories depending on where you are from. In Vancouver it used to be a day when the police would hassle groups of high school students when they went out to march in support of workers.Labour, beginning of Spring, displaying the strength of the nation ..all of these are signs of May Day. Mayday(as a single word) is also an emergency call for boats and airplanes.It might be "illegal" to use on the radio now ?? But we can hint at it I'm sure. I'm not sure about the graphics. Is there a way to bring all the May Day ish things together in a collage? If someone has an idea, please go for it.

• tactics, counter - surveillance, listening above and below the surface of something(the sea, the culture, the politics of the day, etc).The idea that something is much larger below the surface than it seems from above. • sonic ambience— we can work from the deeps to the surface, exploring perhaps we begin at the waterline then dive deep, and poke up our periscopes once in a while, then finally surface ? • below water things might slow down, can be sonic suggestions of new forms / creatures / ideas / reveries; also below the surface new forms of power, our future jellyfish overlords are waiting in polyp form, vast bergs melting and seas rising • listening to codes and signals from the submarine, interceptions, sneaking around ?

I've been thinking a lot about our next broadcast, trying to organize my thoughts into a pithy concise directive for the month. There’s a couple of conceptual thoughts that have been percolating but given how much the current political situation occupies so much of my thinking these days, it seems best to honor and address that. In particular I’ve been thinking about something a friend in Jerusalem said just after the last election.I was fretting over what was in store with the 2nd term of our president(ahem) approaching, and he said something like “from my perspective, for those of us in the rest of the world, it doesn't seem like there is that much difference between which of your two candidates wins.” Of course he was right… and at the same time also not completely right at all. I’ve been thinking a lot about the difficulty of processing such immense losses at the end of the myth of American exceptionalism.From the uncounted dead due to the end of USAID, to the casualties as a result of the depreciation of science, how much ruin the US has enabled that has gone — and all in likelihood will continue to go — unmourned. Perhaps what’s called for is a proper funeral, but one that’s more like one in New Orleans, or Ghana, or Thailand.One that acknowledges the passings of things lost, but also celebrates life and the future.One where the United States is humbled on the world stage, and is forced at last to finally shut up about how it’s the greatest place on earth. I’m not sure how to translate this into a simple(or for that matter non - simple) directive.Maybe my thinking is naive.And maybe a conscious ceremony akin to those where people write the things they want to be done with on a piece of paper and throw them into a fire is appropriate right now.A Bonfire of the Vanities so to speak, but minus the joyless and harshly judgmental religious connotations. I welcome your thoughts.

Ghostly particles. Neutrinos spewed by the Milky Way’s stars. A nervous system of underground labyrinths. Adapted from the “One Sentence” Radio Camp idea(August, Betsey, Elizabeth, Roberto) ACT I: “Ghostly particles.” ACT II: “Neutrinos spewed by the Milky Way’s stars.” ACT III: “A nervous system of underground labyrinths.” These words are taken from recent headlines. The group uses this text, and this text only, to create sound for the performance.It is divided into three sections which can be loosely followed. The meaning of the text can be interpreted and sounded — perhaps a cosmic hum, the imagined sounds of neutrinos and ghostly particles, a nervous labyrinth, etc.These might be background sounds. The text can also be read in or out of order, by one’s own voice or another.It can be sped up or slowed down.It can be chanted or read as a broadcaster might read the news. It can be cut up, deconstructed, rearranged. The consonants and / or vowels can be read in any order as concrete poetry, consonant rhythms, a hissing of sibilint S’s, a low hum from just the vowels. The text can be read as data by audio software, or as an image by visual software which is then read as data by audio software. The text can be seen as a graphical score. Anything you can imagine to do that uses this text as source material is fair game. After some deliberation about the amount of abstraction we wanted considering the reality happening in Minnesota, we arrived at a final one sentence text: Ghostly particles // on a snowy Minneapolis road // land of 10,000 lakes // absences and loss of innocence // a heavy weight // all hell broke loose // spider-Man backpack and floppy-eared hat // a world where a barrage of honks and whistles signal // they’re having night terrors // passports around their necks // a nervous system of underground labyrinths.

January 17, 2026 1 pm - 2 pm PT. A special radio show for Art's Birthday 2026 Airing live on CITR FM's annual '24 Hours of Radio Art' at citr.ca and on-air in Vancouver at 101.9 FM. The Conduction Series is an improvisational group of ten radio artists from across the Americas who come together once a month to perform a live radio show for WGXC in New York State. As a special treat, they are performing live on CITR. For Art's Birthday they will join together with special guest (and cake baker) Deanne Achong (in Newfoundland) to play with the sounds of mixing, baking, lava flowing, erupting, cooling and eating. All in celebration of CITR's annual 24 hour radio art extravaganza.

How do we end up agreeing on certain ideas? As we persist in repeating them, social contracts begin to form, and over time some rather absurd “truths” arise—such as those embedded in various religious and political belief systems. What silent needs are so powerful that they keep these ideas alive, sometimes for millennia? I’d love to hear your answers. By the way, Merry Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Shalako, Soyal…

The record groove or a strip of tape moves forward by circling, slipping into another layer each time. That coiling motion echoes how time forms paths that don’t quite repeat. The spiral frames the way patterns return at different scales, from tiny biological curves to movements that shift light, air, and weather. A shared structure keeps resurfacing and shows how things grow and reorganize, how memory drifts, and how repetition comes back slightly off axis, opening another turn.

58 minutes of networked improvisation with six participants listening and playing to and along side one another.

LIVE from the RP2 studios at the Austrian Funkhaus in Vienna on National Radio: Ö1 Kunst zum Hören / Kunstradio, this broadcast is a sonic self - portrait of the group.We improvised a show about ourselves, or rather about how we describe ourselves sonically, acoustically, and verbally.

This broadcast is a sonic self - portrait of the group.We improvised a show about ourselves, or rather about how we describe ourselves sonically, acoustically, and verbally.

We all start our washing machines at the same time and live mic them into a real-time audio-radio brainwashing. Whose machine will sound the best? Can we do multi-channel? How do we get the whites as white as possible?

The first 90% of the episode will be a sunset - 40 minutes of fading out, like a lozenge being absorbed into the walls of your mouth. Slowly oozing away. A slow leak. Please prepare half tones and long exhales. I will provide some counterpoint to this in the form of small wigglings, like worms. Then! For the final 10 minutes, the new thing will grow. The worms will get more lively, you all will multiply the worms; they’ll fester and become more active. They’ll take on brassy, fast, zippy forms and in the final minutes unleash themselves into the world. Newborn!

Erkki Kurenniemi had a wonderful way of thinking about music with electronic instruments. He would often say, in Finnish deadpan humor: “Just testing the equipment”. But, what if we create the equipment and systems that we use? How do we test it? Every part of this broadcast will be from a feedback system of some kind. It can be a simple delay. It can be a more intricate granular thing. It can be a long echo chamber in your basement or two mobile phones pointed at each other, each with a mezcal mic open. We’ll then take turns sending impulses through the respective feedback systems so we can hear the geometry of the systems we created.