Imagining Radical Communication with a DIY FM Transmitter

This is a beginner friendly workshop that will teach attendees how to build a small FM radio transmitter while [hopefully] breaking the assumption that you need an engineering degree to start building your own electronics. In addition to teaching technical skills, we will be offering a brief political context of radical radio organizing, past and present, and how people can start to think about building their own communication networks to keep themselves and their neighbors safe. Understanding radio is a great first step in demystifying networked communication.

This workshop requires no previous electronics experience and will consist of actions like hand-placing small components and wires and placing them in a breadboard. Participants will leave with a working radio transmitter that is powerful enough to transmit about one city block and a small publication with instructions for building the circuit and some examples of how radio and DIY networks can be used for radical organizing. Through the process of building electronics and learning together, we hope that this technology will inspire folks to explore radio as a form of communication and experiment with broadcasting as a radical medium. We hope participants will leave the workshop feeling more empowered to take control of their online presence and potential to broadcast. No prior electronics experience is needed!

Join us at Cherry Street Pier at the Termite TV Studio

Facilitator Bios:

Hannah Tardie (they/them) is an artist, educator, and researcher whose work exists as sculpture, installation, essays, event organization, and performance. Tardie views electronics as rich transferential objects through which we can explore intimacy, attachment, and queer relationality. Their work has been shown at La Gaite Lyrique, SPACE Gallery, Westbeth Gallery, One Brooklyn Bridge Park, Arts, Letters, & Numbers, Vox Populi, Pig Iron Theatre Company, and online via websites like Artsy.net, maps-dna-and-spam, and p5.js. Tardie has participated in residencies at Arts, Letters, & Numbers, ChaNorth, Alterworks, Crit NYC, and the Media Archaeology Lab (forthcoming). Tardie was on the organizing committee of the 2021 experimental iteration of the Movement and Computing Conference, lovingly termed Slo MoCo. They solely organized Temple University’s first Electronics Faire in 2024, an annual event they continue to steward. Tardie currently manages a makerspace at Temple University Library’s Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio.

Derek Schwartz (he/him) is an audio engineer, writer, and technologist practicing the art of weaving networks. His values are rooted in DIY music culture, and prior to coming to Philadelphia, he spent time in St. Louis as a music writer and production assistant at KDHX Radio. In his current audio practice, he produces, mixes, and records audio for film and music, and creates experimental audio projects that play with waveforms, radio, and physical media. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Science in Music Technology at Temple University.

Host or Publisher Termite TV Collective