radio x

74.48 dB(A)

Buffering Love in a Hopeless Place

· sonic datastructure – programmed, synthesized, and processed by Igor Štromajer and his computers

Premiere: 7 May 2026 at 15:00 CEST / UTC+2
➠ Livestream

Station: radio x, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
FM / UKW 91.8 MHz
radia.fm production: miss.gunst [GUNST + radiator x]
Radio Show: radiator x
Duration: 28 min

radia.fm – new and forgotten ways of making radio
show #1100
— on air from May 2026
Editor: Verena Kuni

The sonic datastructure 74.48 dB(A)¹ is an acoustic dissection of a heretical technological sacredness. At the core of the composition lies the processor noise of a server hall, establishing a decaying, mathematical (✚²), techno-sacred experience through a monotonous sequence of hums and mechanical sounds. This non-human sonic landscape deciphers the materiality of the internet, which manifests through constant vibration, heat, and forced mechanical cooling.

The server room transforms from technical infrastructure into a consecrated space of mathematics, a hopeless place where the biological body can no longer survive due to noise and sterility. Here, the data stream reaches its harmonic peak within a post-human environment where machines communicate with one another in total autonomy, devoid of any human interaction or intervention. This sonic architecture offers the illusion of salvation through the non-stop flow of information. Every single fan in this system acts as a prayer wheel, maintaining the stability of a fractured digital self in an infinite loop.

The core state of this meditative sonic experience is buffering. In the server environment, love, affect, and identity cease to be fixed points; they become ongoing processes, constantly loading but never fully materializing. Simultaneously, the sonic datastructure deconstructs the myth of the ethereal data-cloud, confronting the audience with the brutal physical force required to sustain modern metaphysics. This non-human mantra, where noise and grief are the only remaining relics, offers failed tactics for transcending political anxiety and establishes meaningless strategies of groundless resistance.

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¹ The title 74.48 dB(A) represents the measured average sound pressure level in the central processing hub of a data center, where the A-weighting curve simulates the human ear’s response to the raw acoustic power of the hardware.

² plus

Format: wav
Sample rate: 48000 Hz, Stereo
32 bit (float)
Bit rate: 3072 kbps
Composition length: 26 min 25 sec

radia.fm – new and forgotten ways of making radio

The Radia Network emerged from a series of meetings, clandestine events, late night club discussions and a lot of email exchanges between cultural radio producers across Europe. The topics vary and the reasons for forming a network are many, but Radia has become a concrete manifestation of the desire to use radio as an art form. The approaches differ, as do the local contexts; from commissioned radio art works to struggles for frequencies to copyright concerns, all the radios share the goal of an audio space where something different can happen. That different is also a form in the making – radio sounds different in each city, on each frequency. Taking radio as an art form, claiming that space for creative production in the mediascape and cracking apart the notion of radio is what Radia does.

It is producing radio stuff that is hard to describe. Some of it can be labeled radio art, or experimental radio, or creative radio. Sometimes it talks, sometimes it doesn’t. It can be noisy, or a kind of soundscape, or a documentary, a document, a talk, a performance. Each and every week, one of the partners will provide the network program, commissioned and produced especially for this purpose : being broadcast by all the partners and made available online.

Some things have to be said about all those partners. They are radio stations, of the independent, non-commercial, community, cultural species. They all speak different languages, and this should create interesting problems. Although initially they were all European radio stations this has changed over time and Radia has become not only larger but also more diverse: 20 partners in 13 countries and growing all the time.

radia.fm stations:

*Duuu (Paris, FR)
∏node (Mulhouse, Paris, FR)
Diffusion (Sydney, AU)
JET FM (Nantes, FR)
Kanal 103 (Skopje, MK)
Orange 94.0 (Vienna, AT)
Radio Campus (Brussels, BE)
Radio Grenouille (Marseille, FR)
Radio Helsinki (Graz, AT)
Radio One 91 FM (Dunedin, NZ)
Radio Panik (Brussels, BE)
Radio Papesse (Firenze, IT)
Radio Študent (Ljubljana, SI)
radio x (Frankfurt/Main, DE)
RadioWORM (Rotterdam, NL)
Reboot.fm (Berlin, DE)
Resonance FM (London, UK)
Soundart Radio (Dartington, UK)
TEA FM (Zaragoza, ES)
Usmaradio (San Marino, SM)
Wave Farm WGXC 90.7-FM (New York, USA)

Affiliates:
Kunstradio (Vienna, AT)
Mobile Radio (Ürzig, DE)
Rádio Zero (Lisboa, PT)

Syndicated by
Campus Paris (Paris, FR)
Harrogate Community Radio (North Yorkshire, UK)
Noise Radio (Zwolle, NL)
Radio ARA (Luxembourg, LU)
Radio Corax (Halle, DE)
Resonance Extra (Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, London, Norwich, UK)