The Transmission Project, part of the SBAC Community Arts Residency, uses analog communication systems, community storytelling, and interactive sculpture to foster connection, dialogue, and shared experience. It creates a “transmission center”—part sculptural installation, part community listening lab— where participants build, share, and disrupt stories using analog tools: rotary phones, cassette tapes, typewriters, mail art, paper directories, loudspeakers, and myths. The Transmission Project uses “obsolete” technologies to “resuscitate human connection in a world choking on algorithmic noise.”

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Upcoming events:

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Wed. Jan 21: The Next Phone Book is a community arts workshop that rebuilds a shared directory from memory, trust, and human connection. Participants begin by contributing the phone numbers they still remember by heart, then place live calls to friends and family to locate and verify additional numbers. Together, these fragments form a new phone directory compiled, designed, and printed as a zine. The resulting phone book is distributed only to the people whose numbers appear within it, creating a closed-loop network rooted in consent, intimacy, and lived relationships. Part social sculpture, part archival experiment, the workshop asks what it means to stay reachable in an age of infinite contacts and forgotten numbers. 6pm-8pm

Sat. Jan 24: Chinese Take Out and Microphones is an interactive art event dedicated to remembering the people we can no longer share a table with. Over shared cartons of Chinese takeout, participants are invited to step up to a microphone and tell stories—of important characters, legendary adventures, small moments, and lasting influences that shaped who we are. Voices are recorded to tape and broadcast as a living signal of memory and progress, carrying these stories beyond the room and into the air. Part communal meal, part oral history, part broadcast ritual, the night honors absence through presence, storytelling, and collective listening. 6pm – 8pm

Tue. Jan 27: The Last Letter Home is a one-night community art workshop that blends writing, voice, and analog broadcast. Participants gather to write a letter they should have sent but haven’t sent. A farewell, a confession, a memory, a message to someone very specific, then step up to record and transmit it live on a dormant FM radio frequency. Part open mic, part public confession, part ritual, the evening invites us to speak our thoughts into the void and listen together. No performance experience required, just a willingness to write, listen, and be present.
6:40 pm until whenever we finish.

Sat. Feb 07: The Last Vinyl Radio Station revives the ritual of radio through shared listening and performance. Participants gather to play vinyl records on a dormant FM frequency while simultaneously live streaming the broadcast online. Each person curates three songs and steps into the role of a disk jockey, introducing and spinning their selections for both local airwaves and distant listeners. Interwoven throughout the night, participants read vintage radio advertisements and weather reports from historic storms, blurring past and present, signal and noise. Part listening party, part live radio theater, the event invites the community to inhabit a fleeting broadcast together, before it fades back into silence. 6pm-9pm Concluding Event 

Guest Dj Sets – Signups will be available for friends and family to come and host a 1-3hr guest dj set with their own music or culled from our vinyl collection. patrick@miscworkshop.com

The Broken Signal Series of interviews – invitations are going out to a small group of former broadcasters, a distinction we are holding open for a wide array of previous roles. 

Listen Live to the Recorded Conversations Online at live365.com

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About the Artist:

Patrick Melroy is a Santa Barbara-based social practice artist whose work often takes the form of interactive sculptures, analog systems, and public performances rooted in collective participation and shared authorship. A founding member of the influential Uppur Bunk Collaborative, Pullstring Press, MISC Workshop, and a charter member of Bottled Lightning Projects in Portland, OR, Melroy has exhibited work from Belgrade to Los Angeles, always with a deep commitment to audience interaction and unconventional settings. Melroy holds an MFA from the Department of Art at UC Santa Barbara and has taught studio art and social practice courses throughout the region, most recently at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. In addition to his gallery and academic work, he designs and leads creativity workshops for both artists and non-artists.