Helen Thorington
Roslindale, MA
http://newradio@turbulence.org
Helen Thorington is a writer, sound composer, and radio producer, whose radio documentary,
dramatic work, and sound/music compositions have been aired nationally and internationally for
the past twenty-five years. The producer of one of the first audio art works broadcast on National
Public Radio, Thorington has subsequently received commissions from RAI (Italian radio), RNE
(Spanish Radio) and ORF (Austrian radio), among others. She has won numerous radio awards,
including Honourable Recognition, Prix Bohemia Radio Festival, Czechoslovakia in 2003; and
Winner, Aether Festival, KUNM-FM, Albuquerque, New Mexico for her composition
“9_11_scapes”.
Thorington has also created compositions for film and installation that have been premiered at
the Berlin Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, and in the Whitney Museum’s annual
Performance series. She has produced three narrative works for the web including Solitaire,
which combines game and storytelling; and she played a principal artistic role in the cutting-edge
multi-location performance work, Adrift, presented as a performance and installation at the New
Museum in New York City, October 19-December 21, 2001. The Deep Wireless Radio Art
Festival, Toronto, Canada, commissioned her composition, “Calling to Mind”, which premiered
there in May 2005.
Thorington has also composed for dance. Compositions for post-modern dancers Bill T. Jones
and Arnie Zane include “Monkey Run Road”, “Blauvelt Mountain” and “Valley Cottage.” She
performed with the Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane Dance Company at Jacob’s Pillow, MA in
2002, and at The Kitchen, New York City in 2003.
Thorington was an invited speaker at Upgrade! Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, South Africa in ’06; MIT5: creativity, ownership and collaboration in the digital
age, an international conference in 07; and a keynote at Digital Arts Week: The Meeting Point
Between Art and Technology at ETH Zurich. She was also a speaker at the Music in the Global
Village Conference in Budapest in December ’09. Thorington has taught new media classes at
the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) and at Emerson College (Boston). She has published
numerous articles including two on networked musical performances for Contemporary Music
Review (2005, 2006); and a feature article on the evolving context for sound and radio practice
for the Tate (London) in 2008. Thorington was recently commissioned to compose a work for
“loss”, a sound-light performance by Ajaykumer presented at the Pridhi Art Institute in
Bangkok, Thailand in December 2010. She is currently collaborating with visual, performance
and media artist, Jacki Apple, on an experimental narrative.
Thorington is also the Co-Director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., the founder and
producer of the national weekly radio series, New American Radio (1987-1998), the founder and
producer of the Turbulence and Somewhere websites, and of the two internationally acclaimed
blogs, Networked_Performance: http://turbulence.org/blog and Networked_Music_Review:
http://turbulence.org/networked_music_review; and co-producer of the 2009 Networked: a
(networked_book) about (networked_art): http://networkedbook.org