Festival & Award · 2026-07-04
A Noise-Art Rotation on ORF Ö1
Austria's public broadcaster ORF Ö1 will present three contemporary European radio-art pieces from the catalogue of the European Broadcasting Union's (EBU) Ars Acustica community on 6 July, including an SWR/ORF co-production that previously received an honorable mention in the Prix Palma competition.
The Prix Palma Ars Acustica has been awarded annually since 2013 by the EBU's Ars Acustica group to outstanding works at the intersection of radio art, sound art, media art, text-sound composition and electroacoustic music — entries are submitted by the radio-art departments of European public broadcasters themselves. The 2026 grand prize went to British artist James Wellburn for "Longyearbyen: life at the edge of industry and wilderness" (the winner was announced on 16 June 2026); Austria's 6 July broadcast is a broader European selection drawing on this year's Ars Acustica output, not limited to the newest grand-prize winner.
The first piece, "Denken mit den Ohren, Miniatur 22," is the latest installment in a series by Austrian sound artist Sam Auinger, born in Linz in 1956. Auinger has explored the perception of urban soundscapes since the early 1980s; since 1989 he has created permanent public sound installations together with American artist Bruce Odland under the name O+A — including the "Harmonic Bridge" at MassMoCA in Massachusetts (since 1998) and "Sonic Vista" in Frankfurt (since 2011). This miniature examines noise and loudness as acoustic phenomena.
The second piece, "rocococorecore," was made by Düsseldorf-born Antonia Alessia Virginia Beeskow as a 2025 SWR/ORF co-production; this is the work that received the honorable mention in the Prix Palma competition. Beeskow studied archaeology and applied theatre studies, and her practice spans radio art, sound art, performance, dance and theatre — in 2024 she also won the Karl Sczuka Förderpreis (the Karl Sczuka Prize's grant for emerging artists) for her piece "Ecce Sigh! Siren calls, still I feel the same." "Rocococorecore" takes its cue from "corecore," a 2020s internet aesthetic that charges everyday content with kitsch and melancholy; built from text, sample and media fragments, it explores the emotional weightlessness of digital culture.
The third piece, the 34-minute "Skywave," was commissioned by WDR's Studio Akustische Kunst from Danish sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard, born in 1975, who has recorded shortwave radio broadcasts since he was nine years old. The work composes with shortwave frequencies (3–30 MHz) — number-station Morse sequences, coded voices, and the static between signals. Kirkegaard works with unorthodox tools — accelerometers, hydrophones, home-built electromagnetic receivers — and has previously "listened in" on volcanic ground, a nuclear power plant, ice, and the human inner ear.
🎧 ORF Ö1 — Hörspiel und Radiokunst (hangtár)
Cast & Crew
- Sound artist Sam Auinger
- Sound artist Antonia Alessia Virginia Beeskow
- Sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard
Sources: ORF Ö1 · EBU (European Broadcasting Union) · RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse)
This article was partly machine-composed.