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GEOGRAPHIES OF MEDIA
Series Editors: Torsten Wissmann
and Joseph Palis
SOUND,
SPACE AND
SOCIETY
Rebel Radio
Kimberley Peters
Geographies of Media
Series editors
Torsten Wissmann
Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning
University of Applied Sciences
Erfurt, Germany
Joseph Palis
Department of Geography
University of the Philippines Diliman
Quezon, Philippines
Media is always spatial: spaces extend from all kinds of media, from news-
paper columns to Facebook profiles, from global destination branding to
individually experienced environments, and from classroom methods to
GIS measurement techniques. Crucially, the way information is produced
in an increasingly globalised world has resulted in the bridging of space
between various scalar terrains. Being and engaging with media means
being linked to people and places both within and beyond traditional
political borders. As a result, media shapes and facilitates the formation of
new geographies and other space-constituting and place-based configura-
tions. The Geographies of Media series serves as a forum to engage with
the shape-shifting dimensions of mediascapes from an array of method-
ological, critical and analytical perspectives. The series welcomes proposals
for monographs and edited volumes exploring the cultural and social
impact of multi-modal media on the creation of space, place, and everyday
life.
Geographies of Media
ISBN 978-1-137-57675-0 ISBN 978-1-137-57676-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57676-7
vii
viii PREFACE: NOT FADE AWAY
not able to provide DJs on sea with instant feedback by pressing a button
on their smart phones. Participating in the relationship between broad-
caster and receiver seems to have happened more on an imaginative level—
another angle of geographic research on which Peters has very amply
provided insightful comments and observations. An even deeper investi-
gation into the imaginative geographies of listening to radio could easily
fill another book of the Geographies of Media series.
Reading through Kimberley Peters’ book will provide you with an idea
of how it must have been, tuning into those ‘socially abnormal’ radio
shows. The taste of sea salt is almost in your mouth when you learn about
the dichotomies of land vs. sea, of open areas vs. closed confinements, of
the cozy blanket over the listener’s head vs. the roaring thunder around
the DJs’ cabin. It tells us that the context of place is of importance when
it comes to media production. Even though the sound source may be
outside territorial borders, the quality of this uncertain Otherness, to use
a phenomenological term by Edmund Husserl, resonates in the transmit-
ted sound waves.
Morality is another recurring term in the discussion. While it was not
officially illegal to broadcast rock music from international waters to the
British homeland, it was seen as morally renegade. Future inquiries on
moral boundaries as having spatial and social implications in other media
geography research and studies would make for interesting trajectories
that link imaginative geographies within a larger media project.
Politics also play an important role in Rebel Radio. Soundwaves as a
natural phenomenon elude the grasp of geopolitical conformities. Altered
sound waves, carrying the rebel soundscape to receivers inside ‘enemy’
territory, are no exception. Just like the visual dominates geographic dis-
cussions over sound, so the visible takes precedence over acoustic
entities.
Thinking about the defenselessness of a government to prevent sound
waves from infiltrating national airspace, and realizing the enormous
potential for alternative voices to be heard, the discussion of Rebel Radio
leads us back to the twenty-first-century cyberspace and the still expand-
ing Internet. Today, about ten percent of radio listeners in the UK already
use computers, smart phones, and apps to listen to their favorite radio
shows. While digital transmission comes with a much clearer quality of
sound, radio becomes much easier to regulate too. Anybody who has ever
tried to tune in to a radio station from a foreign country has experienced
access restrictions, due to a non-valid IP address. So, Kimberley Peters’
PREFACE: NOT FADE AWAY
ix
inquiry not only tells a story of an old medium on an old pirate ship from
about 50 years ago, it also urges us to think about the future development
of radio, including alternative audio podcasting. Maybe, keeping the
soundscape transmitted via radio waves in our daily lives would provide us
with more than just a nostalgic retrospective. If nothing else, white noise
and bad reception might be the very part of the listening experience we do
not want to miss out on.
Or, as Steve Jobs puts it: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The
rebels.”
xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Encore 113
Index 117
xiii
Prelude
xv
xvi Prelude
References
Abstract Why examine the relations between sound, space and society,
and why do so through the lens of rebel radio stations? This chapter sets
the scene for the book, attending to the turn towards multi-sensory geog-
raphies, geographies of sound, music, and mediated geographies, before
outlining the need to take radio seriously within such work. Notably, this
chapter argues that current scholarship related to radio could push further
through investigating how the very aesthetics of sound shape (and are
shaped by) space, and society. The chapter closes by signposting the book
to follow, with a brief overview of chapters.
exclusively “belong” to the visual sense’ (2011, 6). Whilst sound is the
focal point of this book, it is with the acknowledgement that the linkages
between sound, space, and society are forged through sounds that evoke
images, felt emotions, and affects (following Pile 2010). Radio, it will be
argued, has been a special technology and soundscape central to socio-
spatial formations and political contestation. Drawing on the example of
unauthorised, so-called rebel radio stations (in particular, the longest run-
ning offshore pirate station, Radio Caroline, which operated from 1964 to
1991), the capacities, atmospheres, and affects of sound will be critically
unpicked. The remainder of this chapter sets the scene for what is to fol-
low. In the next section the ‘turn’ towards multisensory geographies is
explored in greater depth to contextualise approaches to making sense of
sound. Thereafter, the lacuna in studies of radio, and the production, con-
sumption, and regulation of broadcasted sound will be addressed, open-
ing up the rationale for this book to address the connections between
sound, space, and society through the activities of rebel radio stations.
Finally, an outline of the book will follow, signposting the chapters to
come.
———
*****
*****
*****
— Vai sinne, vai sinne asti pääsi, a mikäs oli päästessä, kun oli
laiva ja kaikki itsellä, senkun seilasi vaan!
— A mikäs oli levitellessä, pankki oli, makasiina oli, laiva oli — sillä
seilasi vielä karkuun. Mitähän tekee nyt Rasutovi? Missä sikoja
syöttelee, missä keitättää makkaroita? A vot en tiedä! Mutta hyvä oli
mies, Rasutovi.