Page - 47 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Patricia Jäggi | Cosmopolitan Noises 47 After changing location and choos- ing nighttime for listening I was able to acquire the technical skills for the functioning of the knobs on my radio set, and I was finally able to receive shortwave signals. After this initial training, the reenact- ment, a demonstration experiment could start. One week in May 2016 I spend my evenings in the media archaeo - logical fundus of Humboldt Uni- versity, Berlin. There is a profes- sional shortwave receiver, which originated from the German mili- tary. This apparatus, which has no loudspeakers and needs head- phones, should enable even better reception and listening. To docu- ment my experience, I recorded all the sounds of the radio set I list - en ed to and made, while listening, de tailed listings of my impressions. The listing below (table 1) documents 42 minutes of my experience as a channel hopper and traveller in the ether. My hands were often on the knobs while my ears concentrated on finding sounds that might contain semantic entities such as language or music. Sometimes I could stop on a frequency which came in well, I listened to the voices or music for two minutes, then continued my search. Sometimes I slowly lost a quite clear and seemingly stable signal. Sometimes there would be an unpredicted change in volume, making the voices so gentle that they became incomprehensible because of the whirring of the radio set. There were also interferences of neighbouring signals that produced strange distortions and spontaneous jumps between broadcasters. Sometimes there was only noise and I started to listen to the materiality of the sounds themselves ‒ what can be described as reduced listening (Chion 1994, 25-33). Besides searching for signals, I was imbued with the need for a constant dialogue with my radio set. I had to regularly readjust the frequency and volume for good reception. The incoming shortwaves felt like ocean waves. Interestingly, I started to like the challenge of find- ing and receiving the signals between walls of noise – the signals being like inhabited islands during a noisy sea voyage. The WP below represents my brief participation in an Arabic music programme. At other times I was part of a Chinese language course in German and I re- ceived a documentary about a Swiss-French composer who was giving a show in Beijing. Both broadcasts were made by Radio China International. I also listened to some Muslim prayers from Bangladesh and heard a late night techno party with an enthusiastic Italian speaking commentator. It was astonishing to me how the interaction with the radio set and the found Image 5: Telefunken E 863 KW/2 from the 1970s – a standard model in the German Navy. (Credit: bw- schmitti.de)