On Air

On Air is a broadcast art work staged between an aerial vantage point and an audience at ground level. 

For a single hour at sunset the landscape is translated into words by a duo of commentators and relayed to the remote audience, where an act of faith between the listeners and the remote speakers ensues.

Graeme Miller’s team of audio describers unlock the space of the city from its centre outwards. A score of shifting grammatical tools reveal juxtaposition, synchronicity, action, space, the common and the unique. Each presentation is an unscripted and singularly composed response to its location. The broadcast is mixed live with the unique underscoring of an Aeolian harp sited in the aerial viewpoint.

In its first form it was commissioned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for Road Show and produced by Dream (2012) and broadcast directly to the listeners below on FM radio. Commentary was made by a wide range of people including sports and continuity announcers.

Subsequently it has taken a simpler form staged between an aerial viewpoint and listening space where the broadcast is able to be heard both live and on repeat. It was mounted between the top of Bailén 1, and the gallery of Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao (2016) and in Sculpture in the City/Whitechapel Gallery Nocturnal Creatures (2019) between a top floor hotel room and St Botolph Without Aldgate, London.