Making Waves

On today’s show we are listening to sounds from Waterscape , a sound sculpture by Lina Choi as well as an artist talk given by Choi on June 20th 2026. The Montréal-based artist creates performances and installations that all feature water in some way. Drawing from field recordings and experimental sound processes, she creates works that evoke fluidity, memory, and sensory experience.  To watc...

On today’s episode of Making Waves we are playing back electroacoustic pieces and discussion from a concert that took place in-person and online as part of Pride celebrations on June 6, 2026 in South River, Ontario, Canada.   Last month we included an interview with Barry Truax and we listened to his piece What the Waters Told Me from his Elemental Trilogy . We will play from this concer...

Today’s episode focuses on the pioneering work of composer, author and educator Barry Truax, who recently received the Order of Canada. He will lead us through his personal artistic history linking his early work in computer and electroacoustic music with his role in soundscape studies and the World Soundscape Project. These strands came together in the 1990’s with his implementation of sampled so...

Coming up on Earth Day (April 22) many campus and community radio stations around the world participate in The Wetland Project , a 24 hour broadcast of the soundscape from ṮEḴTEḴSEN or Saturna Island, British Columbia. Back in November 2024, Making Waves host Darren Copeland spoke to project organizers Mark Timmings and Brady Marks.  On today’s episode we will feature that conversation and en...

This edition of Making Waves begins with a performance of Sandpaper Hammock by Aliyah Aziz that was recorded February 21st, 2026 in South River, Ontario, Canada. In this performance Aliyah Aziz uses electromagnetic 'listening gloves' to probe various electronic devices on the table in front of her. At other times, she will activate with the help of audience members the sewing machine ins...

Part of last month’s show included Anju Singh playing her interactive electromagnetic sound sculpture Material Transmissions . On today’s show we will talk to Anju Singh more about the sound sculpture and intersperse that conversation with more performances on it.  Some of those are made by audience members who attended the exhibition opening back on January 8th. Through the sound sculpture v...

Today's episode plays pieces from the 2026 Deep Wireless Festival of Radio and Transmission Art. To begin, Anju Singh performs her new sound installation Material Transmissions , an electromagnetic sound instrument which the audience can also play.  The recording was made for the opening of the festival on January 8th, 2026. Following that the remainder of the show consists of pieces from the...

Guest Host Claude Schryer from the conscient podcast has invited three Canadian sound artists to have a discussion in response to the phrase, ‘death as a natural transformation of energy and consciousness, not an end’  All three artists have been on past episodes of the Conscient podcast which is about Art and the Ecological Crisis. They are Azul Carolina Duque ( e211 art as medicine ), Kenne...

Today we are featuring two interviews from the Conscient podcast series. Conscient is produced by Claude Schryer in Ottawa. It revolves around conversations with artists about the climate emergency. The show includes an extensive collection of interviews and discussions with a diverse range of artists that are all tackling the climate emergency in their own unique and distinctive ways.  The m...

On today’s show we feature sound art works by two Indonesian sound artists. The hour will conclude with selections from Gardika Gigih’s Mikrokosmos series of works, but the majority of the show will feature a recording of a recent performance by Rani Jambak that was recorded on September 20, 2025 at NAISA in South River. In last month’s episode we heard an interview with Rani Jambak Kincia Aia . S...

apè aliermo from VenusFest in Toronto interviews sound artist Rani Jambak. Jambak’s music is influenced by the many traditions and musical cultures that can be found in Minangkabau and her birthplace in Medan, Indonesia.  In the last 5 years her main focus has been to re-interpret in musical form Minangkabau philosophy and ancestral knowledge which includes creating her instrument based on a...

Composer Annea Lockwood talks about her work with river sounds throughout her 50 plus years of composing. Her sound map installations of the Housatonic, Danube and Hudson Rivers (and others she has made recently) underscore the value of water in shaping life on earth. Rivers not only bring energy, but Lockwood points out that rivers also have an agency of their own. That agency pushes back against...

Does water have a voice? On today’s show we explore that question through listening to underwater sounds and Darren Copeland’s conversation with sound artist Eric Powell. In his sound installation la Voix de la riviere Powell modified a rotary telephone and connected it to a live transmission of the Haute Yamaska River in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. He is currently working on a new iteration...

This is the first of two episodes about vibro-tactile artworks. These are artworks that are centred in sound, but the sound medium bypasses the cochlea and transmits to listeners directly through their bodies. The first half of the show is a conversation that host Darren Copeland had with Satoshi Morita. Morita is a Japanese sculptor and sound artist based in Germany. He created a number of vibro-...

In this edition of Making Waves we pay tribute to the work of the late Andra McCartney who died in 2019. She was a composer, radio artist, educator, biographer and musicologist active in Canada in the fields of electroacoustic music and soundscape studies.  Her colleagues and close friends Hildegard Westerkamp, Wendalyn Bartley and Gayle Young join us in this episode to share their experience...

On today’s show we are going to listen to the long form sound art composition Zand by Dutch sound artist Marieke Van de ven. And after listening that host Darren Copeland will have a conversation with her to learn more about the piece. Zand explores sand grains as material, concept and sound. Viewed from different perspectives, the sand grains become a place to explore and wander. A composition of...

On today’s show we listen to two works that capture animals and environments in interesting and unique ways. Both works come from the 19th edition of the Deep Wireless Radio Art Compilation, which is now available on soundcloud .   We are going to spend the majority of the show listening to and talking about the multi-species project Pigeon Band , which began with the question: “Do pigeo...

Today's episode is from a live performance of Tree Frog Radio by Ben Donoghue that took place on February 1, 2025. Tree Frog Radio in the Northern Gulf Islands is an unique underground FM radio initiative in British Columbia that uses trees as antenna masts for localized radio broadcasts – expanding a rural island community’s boundaries of the possible. In this radio art performance interviews and...

On today’s episode of Making Waves we will be listening to “Non-predictable” by Omar Reyna. Afterwards we will talk to Omar about his piece which is included in the soon to be released 19th compilation album from The Deep Wireless Festival. Over the next four episodes of Making Waves we will be featuring artists from Deep Wireless. Reyna’s work “Non-predictable” is an exploration of the sounds of...

On today’s show we will be listening to Lake Composition by Ben McCarthy and April Martin and we will also be talking to them about the piece after we listen to it. Lake Composition is a work made for video installation but is also appropriate in a radio context. If you are interested in getting an idea of the images in the video work there is a trailer for the piece here: Lake Composition Trailer...

Mark Timmings and Brady Marks from The Wetland Project in British Columbia speak to Host and NAISA Artistic Director Darren Copeland. The Wetland Project is an exploration of a 24-hour field recording of a marsh on Saturna Island (ṮEḴTEḴSEN) made with the assistance of recordist Eric Lamontagne. The reverberant soundscape, featuring birds, frogs and airplanes, has been shared with international au...

How can video games be a tool for exploring machine hums and drones? That is one of the subjects we are exploring today on Making Waves with host Darren Copeland. Colin Frank is a percussionist, composer and media artist from Ottawa and based currently in Huddersfield UK. In his installation Soundmap of Sherbrooke’s Machine Songs the gallery visitor uses a joystick and track ball to remix field re...

Today’s episode highlights the Sonic Hugs collection curated by Colin Black. Sonic Hugs features nine Australian composers and sound artists that were invited to create original radio art pieces that try to connect the ideas of "Sonic" and "Hug".  I discussed with Colin Black his motives and interests in starting the project and his impressions of the outcomes and responses that emerged. He a...

On today’s show we feature multi-disciplinary artist Christine Charette and her performance Roots that Braid Themselves . Christine Charette lives in the Almaguin Highlands region of Ontario. Her performance took place outdoors on July 18 at Warbler’s Roost in South River during World Listening Day. In her performance she had masks, paper sculptures and lines of text displayed on tree branches and...

This episode of Making Waves reflects on the life and work of Susan Frykberg (1954-2023). It begins with a radiophonic series of pieces she made called The Audio Birth Project and features an interview with two of Susan's closest Canadian colleagues Jim Montgomery and Tina Pearson. They reflect on Susan's life in Canada, the barriers she overcame and the impact she had on experimental sound art in...