This post has been a long time coming.
My main project at the moment is constructing a small radio which emits the sounds of porn.
It comes as a response to the themes in the story
The Enormous Radio by John Cheever. Where the life of a 'normal couple' are changed when they purchase a radio which lets them hear what is going on in their neighbours' apartments.
The character of the wife in the story becomes obsessed with this radio and the obsession with the private lives of those around her alters her behaviour, upsetting her and her marriage.
Pornography, being so accessible and understood to be a private matter (because we often watch it when we masturbate), is also altering behaviour and I believe we are far from understanding how and in what way.
This project is a part of a brief called Adaptation/Interpretation. At the conclusion of this brief all the students involved will be exhibiting works based on short stories in a gallery space at the Royal College of Art. Taking this format of exhibition into consideration I decided to make a piece that will require constant engagement if it is not to be disturbing or at least irritating. Like porn which is causing detrimental effects, not because it is inherently bad, because we don't understand it. This also echoes my opinion which is that we should be engaging with it and learned how it is affecting us.
This radio will have two knobs, one for volume and one for station. at the moment my plan is for the radio to have 69 stations with the currently played station chosen at random each time the knob is twisted.
When I first started working on this project I created posters with tearable sheets (I hung them around the college) inviting anyone who sees them to complete the sentence 'porn is…'. One of the 69 stations will be these contributions are read out loud in a loop.
Another station will feature a recorded conversation about the subject of pornography and how it is affecting our relationships. I also intend to have the original story of the enormous radio (read out loud) feature as one of the stations.
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| One of my posters |
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| Contributions |
The remaining 66 stations will feature soundtracks to porn films.
I have actually created the mechanism and I find it very uncomfortable to listen to, so I'm quite hopeful. Although at the moment I somehow managed to fry one of the circuits so I need to do it again and I'm a bit stressed because of that!
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| 3D printer printing the knob |
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| The nipple shaped knob |
