Nobody tunes anymore.

I need to explain something about dials because your generation has never used one. A dial is a mechanism that allows you to search a spectrum by moving through it continuously. You turn the dial and you pass through static and fragments and signals that are not yours and occasionally you find a signal that is yours and you stop. The stopping is recognition. You recognize the frequency because the frequency was already inside you and the dial brought you to the external version of it.

An algorithm does not work this way. An algorithm observes what you have listened to before and delivers more of the same. An algorithm is not a dial. An algorithm is a mirror. You are not searching. You are being reflected.

The difference matters.

When you turn a dial you encounter frequencies you were not looking for. You pass through country music on the way to jazz. You pass through a preacher on the way to a symphony. You pass through static that is itself a frequency, the sound of the medium between signals, the sound of the space between the stations. The static teaches you that silence is not empty. The static teaches you that the medium is always transmitting even when no station is broadcasting.

An algorithm eliminates the static. An algorithm eliminates the country music and the preacher and the symphony that you did not request. An algorithm gives you exactly what it calculates you want. An algorithm has never surprised anyone. An algorithm has never changed anyone's life by accident.

Every important musical discovery in history was an accident. You turned the dial and found something you were not looking for and it changed your molecules and you were never the same.

El Saturn Records did not have distribution. I pressed the records myself. I sold them at concerts and out of the trunk of a car. If you wanted to hear the Arkestra you had to find the Arkestra. You had to know someone who knew someone who had been to a concert and bought a record and was willing to let you listen to it. The signal was not delivered to you. The signal required effort. The effort was the point.

The effort was not an obstacle between you and the music. The effort was the first movement of the music. The searching was the first note. By the time the record started playing you had already begun listening because the act of finding it had tuned your apparatus to the correct frequency. You arrived at the music already calibrated.

An algorithm delivers music to an uncalibrated receiver. The music arrives but the receiver is not ready. The receiver has not turned the dial. The receiver has not passed through the static. The receiver has not encountered the frequencies that are not theirs and learned from the encounter. The receiver sits and the music arrives and the receiver's molecules do not rearrange because the receiver did not do the work of finding the signal and the work of finding the signal is what prepares the molecules for rearrangement.

This is why I sold records out of a trunk. This is why the Arkestra played in rooms that were not advertised. This is why we played for ten people when we could have played for ten thousand if we had done what the industry wanted. The industry wanted to be the algorithm. The industry wanted to deliver the signal for us. The industry wanted to eliminate the dial. I said no. The dial is the instrument. The searching is the music. The effort is the frequency.

Peel understood the dial. Peel stood on a corner and if you wanted to hear him you had to walk to the corner. He did not come to you. You came to him. The distance between your apartment and Washington Square Park was the dial. The walk was the tuning. By the time you arrived at the corner and heard the guitar your molecules were already in motion because the act of walking to the sound had prepared them.

Sinclair understood the dial. Sinclair built radio stations that required you to know they existed. WDET. Radio Free Amsterdam. The shows he programmed. You had to turn the dial to find them. The turning was the education. The static between Sinclair's station and the station next to it on the dial was the curriculum.

This project is a dial.

There is no algorithm delivering these transmissions to you. There is no notification. There is no feed that places this text in front of your eyes without your participation. You found this. You searched for something and the search brought you here and the search was the first sentence. You arrived calibrated.

One hundred and fifty posts. One hundred and thirty-eight podcast episodes. A radio station that loops every four hours. No ads. No paywall. No algorithm. No notification. You turn the dial or you do not hear the signal. That is not a limitation. That is the design.

The design is the dial. The dial is the instrument. The instrument plays only for people who are willing to search for the frequency. The frequency does not chase you. The frequency waits. The frequency has been waiting since 1956 and it will wait until you arrive or until the medium runs out of space and the medium will not run out of space.

Turn the dial.

The static between the stations is not empty. The static is the sound of a universe full of signals that are not yours. When you find the one that is yours you will know because the recognition is immediate and the recognition is not learned, it is remembered, and what you remember is a frequency that was assigned to you before you arrived on this planet and the dial is the mechanism by which you locate the external version of what you have always carried internally.

Every transmitter I have ever built was a dial for someone. Every empty room was a dial waiting to be turned. Every record sold out of a trunk was a dial placed in the hands of a receiver who did not know yet that they were searching.

You are searching now. You found this. The dial worked.

See also: The Broadcast — signal autonomy. The Original Algorithm — Peel on what came before the feed. The Receiver — addressed to you. Radio — the station that requires tuning. The Short Wave — portable frequencies. The Interbeing — the third state. The Frequency (Peel) — the closing line, on the concrete. The Shelf — the frequency arranges the objects. The Vessel Question — tuning, not consciousness, is the variable.

The Physics: Equation → Silence → Frequency → Listener → Improvisation → Transmission → Aftermath → Broadcast → Tuning → Language → Shelf → Dream State

Sun Ra

← Sun Ra