Helen Thorington, Who Brought Sonic Art to the Airwaves, Dies at 94
The New York Times A pioneer in radio art and, later internet art, she created a blend of synthesizer compositions and found sounds that opened new artistic terrain.
Helen Thorington, whose haunting sonic compositions helped bring the medium of radio art to a national audience and provided the soundscape for filmmakers, artists and choreographers, died on April 13 in Lincoln, Mass. She was 94.
Her partner and collaborator, Jo-Anne Green, said she died in a hospice from complications of Alzheimers disease. Her death was not widely reported at the time.
Radio art was a niche medium when Ms. Thorington started out, but she helped bring attention to the form through her work, which was frequently featured on NPR and other noncommercial outlets, and later as the founder of a project called New American Radio, which commissioned more than 300 works that were broadcast on more than 70 radio stations for more than a decade starting in 1987.
Ms. Thorington began her pioneering work in the 1970s as a writer interested in expanding her short stories and scripts into impressionistic radio dramas. She blended her own musical forays on synthesizer with audio snippets of industrial or nature sounds, unaccompanied improvisations by musicians on various instruments, and samples from radio broadcasts. The result was the auditory equivalent of an art installation.
