The Pulse Memorial is a queer cyber memorial in commemoration of the 49 lives lost in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. Unlike traditional memorials that focus on geolocal specifics and monumentality, our project explores the potential of migratory digital memorials that foster a sense of the ephemeral and develop new conditions of listening and togetherness.

Currently, the project consists of a 24/7 broadcast system using a server and low-latency webrtc. The server continuously simulcasts eight individual streams of synchronized webrtc audio consisting of abstractions, field recordings, and data sonification of victim demographics. To hear the memorial, participants must come together in a group, point their mobile devices at https://pulse.memorial and listen together in one setting. Each connecting participant receives a different track from the 8-channel simulcast broadcast (selected in sequence) forming an independently moving 8-channel swarm of audio - a low-fi, untethered sonic environment where sound emerges dynamically from multiple sources. The piece uses global networking to form local togetherness and when done in low-light resembles a candle-light vigil.

This project is a collaboration between Brook Vann and August Black

Audio Compost is a performance instrument and radiophonic installation whereby visitors can use their mobile phones to capture their voice and send it into a live frippertronic loop that mixes their voices with others in an ever evolving and undetermined sonic event.

The software is adaptable for various installations and venues, and is part of ongoing research in how to use global networking for hyper-local connectivity.

The Conduction Series is a monthly live collaborative radio series airing on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM Radio for Open Ears in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley. It consists of a core group of sound and transmission artists from various locations who come together with other remote participants to perform a kind of live media archeaology together.

We Are Here FM is an ongoing project by artists Betsey BiggsandAugust Blackthat navigates our conceptions of place through images and sounds that are geographically, but not necessarily chronologically or aesthetically, coordinated. Consisting of an ongoing stream of images and generative music in the web, the real-time audiovisual broadcast creates an ever-shifting hyperreal landscape of imaginary situations. Sometimes displayed as an on-site multi-channel installation, these experiences are at times magically experimental, at times hauntingly disturbing, and at times utterly mundane. All listeners, on-site or online, experience the same sound and image at the same time. We hope you enjoy getting lost with us.

Mezcal is a browser app and telematic service that currently works similar to the audio rooms of Slack or Discord, but with broadcast scalability and audio-specific features. The design and development of the software is ongoing and made in close collaboration with radio activists, artists and researchers from the USA, UK, Netherlands, Italy, Colombia, and Australia.

Datadada is a software that will turn the stored data on your hard drive into a movie complete with sound, image, and subtitles.

I have performed with this software, or variations thereof that deal with raw data, at various venues and on my radio shows.

Standup radio was the monthly radio and audio collaboration of Rupert Huber and August Black on Radio Orange, FM 94mhz in Vienna, Austria from 2000-2003.

Most shows were made either by recording while traveling or by one of us phoning or streaming in live to the radio station.

Fundamental radio was the network-audio playground of Markus Seidl and August Black on Radio FRO, FM 105mhz in Linz, Austria from 1998-2004.

For more than 5 years, we produced a weekly live radio art show every Thursday night from 8-9pm. We focused on radio as a genre, sculpture, and as political and social space. We had a number of running themes: silence, feedback, live cooking, improvised talk shows, doom poetry, audio concrete recordings. We often tried to connect broadcast space with network space by using then-current transport technology for text/audio (IRC, streaming media, etc) in innovative ways. We were interested in radio not only as an interface for listening, but also interaction.

While radio was our central practice, we also produced installations, audio works, as well as works for the web and television. In many ways, we became a concept band. For me, personally, it occupied that vast majority of my creative energies during this very active time at the cusp of the millennium changeover.