Ozone

Riga, Latvia
Since 1997
Internet radio
For: acoustic cyberspace explorations, net audio experiments, DJ and electronic music mixes and live networked jam sessions

With the idea that – data can be placed anywhere – Riga based E-LAB artists organization (Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits, Jaanis Garancs) with founded net.radio OZONE in the spring of 1997. Initially, while E-LAB didn't have its own server, it was playing around idea of “networked radio” – in terms of its structure, and using shared resources. Various parts of OZONE net.radio were located in different places: web-site – on the local ISP provider's parks.lv server in Riga (which later was moved to E-LAB's own re-lab.net server), while audio files – on RIS (later – orang.orang.org) server in Berlin and on xs4all.nl in Amsterdam. In this setting OZONE was archived-radio only, publishing online recordings from live jam sessions, organized by E-LAB together with musicians Ugis Vitins and Toms Vitins.

OZONE started their live streaming in November 1997 by transmitting online all events from the Art+Communication'97 festival in Riga. Since then OZONE was producing once in a week experimental live net.radio programmes featuring live music jam sessions and eclectic mixes from E-LAB studio, poetry readings, live interviews, DJs sets, ambient recordings from events, electronic music, etc. A number of local groups and individuals – musicians, DJs, multimedia artists, poets, theorists, etc. were involved – video artist Martins Ratniks and others from E-LAB, Sloka Sound Systems musicians, sound artist Peteris Kimelis, Orbita, Varka Crew djs, Clausthome, Casablanca 2000, DJs AG & Raitis, to name just a few.
It never was the issue – how many listeners are there. (Often in studio were more people then those listening online). Also producing of the content was not so important. The only substantial value for OZONE artists was the process of experimenting and experiencing live sound streams on the internet. During its live sessions, OZONE also coordinated Xchange Open Channel collaborative broadcasting experiments. During the 1998 OZONE also experimented with mobile streaming possibilities – transmitting from clubs in Riga (using tiny telephone line and laptop with Real server and encoder installed on it), as well as from train (using mobile telephone for audio transmission to OZONE at E-LAB studio) – during the mobile contemporary art event, taking place on the train Riga-Ventspils.

OZONE net.radio was most active during the 1997-2003 making their programmes weekly. Later more rarely, but also today it is still broadcasting occasionally, mainly streaming from events organized by RIXC (former E-LAB).

Although a part of the audio files, which were hosted by orang.orang.org have been lost – due hackers attack, there is still large archive available online – more then 200 audio files (about 400 hours or 20 days long sound material).

http://ozone.re-lab.net/
http://ozone.re-lab.net/info.html
http://ozone.re-lab.net/sessions.html
http://ozone.re-lab.net/archive.html