Tickle Trunk
CKUT Puts Magic on the Airwaves
When was the last time you completely indulged only one of your senses? CKUT’s Magic Sound Box will allow you to do just that.
“Radio is usually a very individual experience,” said Courtney Kirkby, the spoken word and community news coordinator from McGill University’s campus radio station CKUT. “[CKUT’S Magic Sound Box] is really interesting because you’re in a place with other people just listening.”
CKUT’s Magic Sound Box is a live radio-art performance. Now in its third year, the event is modeled after a concept developed at Kingston’s campus radio station CFRC.
The Magic Sound Box plays with the idea of radio as art. The aim of the event is to take the audience inside the radio. CKUT wants to explore the limits of auditory imagination and to highlight sound in an intimate setting. The event will occur in complete darkness, providing ample opportunity for radio to blossom in its auditory nature.
“You’re going to a venue in the dark, all four sound speakers are playing different sounds at different times, and you’re just being surrounded by sound,” said Kirkby.
A large open venue will be transformed into an enclosed space using large swaths of fabric. The audience will be inside the box with the performers on the outside. Sounds will play from a quadraphonic speaker system, combined with the sounds created by the natural acoustics of the space and audience members will experience an over-layering of sound: voices, instruments, recordings and electronics.
This year’s two-hour long performances will focus on storytelling and sound. CKUT’s Magic Sound Box will include ventures into musical soundscapes, short stories, exploratory sonic installations and poetry, creating a diversity of sound art. The pieces are mixed up and meshed together, cut up into several pieces and made into one piece.
The event involves all station members from various departments.
“It’s out of the ordinary in terms of what people may do in their regular day jobs. We have a lawyer who contributes to legal news doing a piece; someone else contributed their very first poem. On top of that we have, lots of well-known sound artists and musicians are involved,” said Kirkby.
“The box exemplifies what community radio should be about and what [broadcasting] means to a lot of people at CKUT,” continued Kirkby. “People get a chance to make mistakes and try things. We come together as really different people from all sorts of different backgrounds. It’s successful because it’s dynamic and exciting.”
One of the two performances will be broadcast over the airwaves at CKUT, so one will get a chance to listen in even if they can’t be inside the actual box. But what they will hear on the radio is going to be completely different from what the audience inside the box will be hearing—the broadcasters are using that opportunity to play with sound a little bit more, and to broadcast their own sound art.
“I like to compare the experience of listening to radio to being tickled. You can’t tickle yourself.”
—Courtney Kirkby,
CKUT Radio
“I like to compare the experience of listening to radio to being tickled. You can’t tickle yourself. When someone tickles you, it can be an overwhelming experience. The excitement of what’s coming next—things you would never come to on your own, it opens up a whole new field for you,” Kirkby said.
“[The Magic Sound Box] will appeal to anyone with an open mind, anyone who is ready to let an experience take them somewhere they’ve never been before.”
Check out CKUT’s Magic Sound Box Nov. 18 at L’Envers (185 Van Horne Ave., just east of Parc Ave.). The first show starts at 7:00 p.m. and the second starts at 9:00 p.m. Admission for each show is $7 to $12.
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 14, published November 16, 2010.
