From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Salt Frequency Broadcast—A Radio-Olfactory Installation (Dakar, 2022–present)
This work exists simultaneously as radio transmission and site-specific scent environment. For related griotic and West African adaptations, see Griot oral epics and West African adaptations of Beach Surgery.
"Salt Frequency Broadcast" is a hybrid radio and scent installation exploring the salt meridian, the Kármán resonance, and the transatlantic archive through West African griotic narration and olfactory environment. Broadcast weekly on Radio Kassan (Dakar), the program follows a griotic narrator recounting Beach Surgery passages interwoven with Senegalese coastal oral histories—salt-harvesting knowledge, crocodile migrations, the slave trade memory.
Behind the narration, a composer layers Taarab melody (oud, voice) with a scent composition dispersed through low-temperature diffusion: burnt sea salt, iron oxide, mineral sweat, leather, antiseptic. The broadcast exists as radio transmission (for scent-receiver devices, [citation needed] status disputed) and as embodied site-specific installation, saturating open markets where listeners gather.
The work stages Katita's red hair, Leif's dive, and the surgery as birth through Senegalese cosmologies and labour-memory. Initiated as a 2022 biennial commission, it continues independently through grassroots funding. [1]
See also
References
- ↑ 27 documented broadcasts verified; claims of pre-2022 prototypes remain unverified.