Each year on 17 January, Euroradio join forces to celebrate “Art’s Birthday”. Often wonderfully absurd and humorous, this cutting-edge event in memory of Robert Filliou has its origins in the French artist’s declaration on 17 January 1963 that Art had been born exactly 1,000,000 years ago when someone dropped a dry sponge into a pail of water.

After Filliou’s death in 1987, some artists began exchanging mail art, fax and slow-scan TV events to celebrate Art’s Birthday. Starting in 1994, the Internet became the medium of choice. Never a formal project, the party is organized by each participating venue or broadcaster as desired, on the sole condition that they exchange birthday presents for Art.

On Tuesday, 17 January, the Euroradio Ars Acustica Group will once again organize a special evening of sound art content by EBU radio organizations. The two Euroradio satellite channels, Liszt and Haydn, will offer ready-to-broadcast material that can be mixed or remixed with other live material. The EBU’s Ars Acustica Art’s Birthday webpage (http://artsbirthday.ebu.ch) provides the web addresses of independent international web projects also involved in the party (see http://artsbirthday.net).

Contributions this year span the entire range of possibilities offered by sound art, from a forest of loudspeakers at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp with improvised bird sounds by saxophonist André Goudbeek, or a blend of live electronics and recorded percussion sounds by Alfredo Costa-Monteiro (pictured) and Luís Tabuenca from Barcelona, to a concerto for improvisers and laptop orchestra by Rui Dias from Lisbon.

Contributing EBU and independent radio broadcasters include:

ESC (Austria)
ORF (Austria)
Plankstroom (Belgium)
NAISA (Canada)
HRT (Croatia)
CR (Czech Republic)
SRF (France)
DKU (Germany)
Lokal Harmonie (Germany)
SWR (Germany)
RTÉ (Ireland)
Concertzender (Netherlands)
RTP (Portugal)
ROR (Romania)
RTS (Serbia)
RTVS (Slovakia)
RTVSLO and Radio Cona (Slovenia)
CCMA (Spain)
RTVE (Spain)
SR (Sweden)
RTS (Switzerland)

To see an online gallery display of the famous Art's Birthday folding hats from past years, click on http://planktone.be/abd/fold_a_hat/