As part of the University’s “ArtNow: Performance, Art, and Technology” visiting artist series, Karen Werner, Ph.D., an award-winning radio artist, audio storyteller, and sociologist, will be on campus Oct. 14-18 working with six different classes in the Department of Communication to create short audio self-portraits. The individual sonic self-portraits will come together to create a radiophonic “quilt,” a living collective sound portrait of Monmouth University, that will be broadcast on WMCX 88.9FM on Oct. 18 from 8:30 a.m.-10 a.m.
In addition to class-based production workshops held on Monday, Oct. 14, there will be two open audio lab times on Oct. 15 and Oct. 17 from 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. where faculty, staff, and students are invited to join the audio project by creating a 1.5 minute audio self-portrait in the Interactive Digital Media (IDM) lab located in room 135 of the Plangere Center.
“As a founding member of Monmouth’s ArtNow visiting artist series, I was excited to invite audio wizard Dr. Karen Werner to campus because her work is so innovative, haunting, and grounded in audio stories that really matter in the world,” said Deanna Shoemaker, Ph.D., associate professor of communication and program director for the master’s program in communication. “Some of her work is wildly experimental too, and I wanted our students to be exposed to an artistic and socially-engaged ‘strange radio’ genre as well as audio artists who are working around the world as part of a sonic community.”
Werner will also be performing an immersive lecture-performance in story and sound—”Strange Radio, Live!”—on Oct. 16 from 4:30 p.m.-6 p.m. in Edison Atrium, room 201. This event is free and open to the public and additional information is available online.
“We are so lucky to have Dr. Werner here for a weeklong residency that allows undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff to work with her in select classes and in open lab hours to create audio self-portraits,” said Shoemaker. “This ‘radiophonic quilt’ can evoke who we are as individuals and collectively within our Monmouth community.”
Werner is the inaugural 2019-2020 Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellow and teaches in the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Socially-Engaged Art program at Goddard College in Vermont. Werner’s radio art and sound installations have been commissioned, broadcast, and exhibited internationally, including at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, Australian Broadcast Corporation, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Österreichischer Rundfunk’s Kunstradio, and the Kone Foundation in Finland.
This ArtNow residency is co-sponsored by WMCX, the IDM lab, CommWorks: Students Committed to Performance, and the Department of Communication.