Each year on 17 January, Euroradio Members 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 Saturday, 17 January, the Euroradio Ars Acustica Group will organize a Special Evening of sound art content by Members. 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 modern re-enactment of the “Raft of the Medusa” in a public swimming pool near Antwerp, to a an Internet sound bridge between Tokyo and Prague, or even a “bio-electric” radio broadcast from Vancouver through climbing vine antennas, involving individual bee sounds mixed with synthesizer modules wired into the plants.

Participating Euroradio broadcasters include:

ORF (Austria)

HRT (Croatia)

CR (Czech Republic)

SRF (France)

DLR (Germany)

SWR (Germany)

RTE (Ireland)

RTP (Portugal)

ROR (Romania)

RTR (Russia)

RTS (Serbia)

RTVS (Slovakia)

RTVSLO (Slovenia)

RTVE (Spain)

SR (Sweden)

RTS (Switzerland)