hi all


Pits mail was a bit unclear, so I don't know what he really wants
me to write. Let me just go into this mini-fm thing:
The Amsterdam piratestations do not use mini fm transmitters.
They use much more powerful transmitters, which are illegal. It
is therefore not sensible to discuss there whereabouts and also
negociations around them in public spaces like this one. Eventhough
the policy of the justice dept here is to tolerate the 'alternative'
broadcasters, the stations are never sure how long this will last.
Anyone that can be traced to a piratestation is at risk of being
arrested when a station gets busted, which was evident when Radio
100 was taken off the air a few years ago. They use a special law
that allows people to be arrested on grounds of membership of an
illegal organisation, artikel 140, which was also used a lot for
picking people from the street rather at random during the Eurotop.

Mini-FM stories I only know from people that worked with them in Japan.
I have no idea whether the conditions in other countries for these
transmitters are the same. In Japan more powerful transmitters then
these small minifm transmitters are forbidden, and because of this
Tetsuo Kogawa got the excellent idea to build chains of these small
transmitters, to still be able to broadcast in the entire city. These
transmitters do not reach further then about 100 meters, so global
domination with a single mini fm station in large areas is rather
difficult. These chains did not work often btw, it takes a lot of
organisation. It was more an experiment.

To use a mini fm station to rebroadcast webcasts is of course nice, but
one has to keep in mind its limited reach. These things are probably
handiest at festivals or campingsites, where a lot of people are
clustered together in a relatively small area. Best is then to
maybe have special rooms and spaces for the broadcast to be listened to.
What I like about the rebroadcasting or rather mediation into the ether
of webcasts is the exposure of the net into public/physical space.
In places/countries where alternative, pirate or independent radio
is not possible I am trying to push the idea to have public spaces
that are connected through audio on the net, that maybe have a shared
stream that is filled by the local different groups. This idea I
proposed in Berlin early last year, and it is only realised at occasions,
so not on a regular basis. I talked to RIS and Convex TV back then,
and Pit Schulz. With the strong independent audio culture that lives
in Berlin something like this should be possible.

In Amsterdam I tried to do something slightly similar, which worked only
once uptill now, but could work again easily. This is only in one
space though, which has also an etherconnection (illegal fm transmitter).
The idea was to rebroadcast events like FutureSonic.
The space is a respectable institution, which makes access and play with
the material less easy. Dear Pit: I will push it more    :)
I am so much a writer these days...

Maybe the transmitters in Banff and Australia are not really mini fm?
The announcement Pit refers to was a joke most of all, I guess.
Can't imagine it was serious, that global donimation.
Anyway I am curious to hear about rules for mini fm in other countries.




regards



J
*


text by Tetsuo Kogawa:
http://www.dds.nl/~n5m/texts/kogawa.htm
unfortunetaly somebody build in an incredibly irritating java thing
in the n5m site, which constantly says tic/tac. Hopefully you can
still see this text without going through the java'gate'.



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