‘Nam June’s Spirit was Speaking to Me’ is a project by Aki Onda consisting of four recordings captured while flicking through radio stations on a handheld radio. This project came about purely by chance when Onda stumbled upon a submerged voice among a sea of interference which he concluded was Nam June’s spirit speaking to him.

After listening to these pieces I started to think about how the destruction of radio signal may affect the listener’s perception. Interference can create organic and inspiring variation in the sound waves that reach the listener’s ear, allowing the listener to come to their own conclusions about what the original sound source is. I think radio listening is often spontaneous with so many extraneous variables that can affect the sound, whether it be natural or man made, meaning the listener when there is a large amount of interference will have to piece together the information flooding into there ears themselves allowing for wild ideas to be perceived after listening.

While I was listening to Onda’s recordings, instead of hearing Nam June’s spirit like Onda, I was visualising ‘Elektronischer dé-coll/age Happening Raum’ by Wolf Vostell. I found my mind picturing this installation because of my perception of the noises produced in Onda’s pieces and what I found related to it. Vostell’s main philosophy is built around the idea that destruction is all around us, running through all of the twentieth century. I think Onda’s pieces, and radio listening in general fit into this philosophy as a whole as the destruction of the original radio signal is an inevitability. Another thought I had was that sound on the radio requires more thought. When there is interference and the message isn’t clear, I often found I was straining to process what was coming in through my ears, often coming up with the wrong idea of what the sound on the other end is trying to get across. Sometimes I find what my brain might perceive when listening to a destroyed signal may be more interesting than if I were to listen to the clean version of the same sound.