The media are unbearable. What to do? Some people express their righteous democratic rage by interfering with the regular media. They bring the lie machine to a halt. Others disappear behind the curtain, conscious that the media mill will pervert their good intentions. They leave behind no traces in the media; they simply perform important works. Radio Patapoe is behind them all the way, but would like to draw your attention to a third path.

Information incites a Pavlovian reaction in many. It has to be passed on, actualized, commented on -- fast! The pace at which the info streams in and the shock value of the latest report determines the relative attention accorded the item. Remember Tiananmen and Desert Storm. Because of the live requirement and the craving for images, people are easily satisfied with dubious sources. The power of a media event is that it pushes other items out. Every medium automatically chases the ideal of the worldwide live report. No one thus escapes selection and the multiplication of complex background information. Only children can still make sense of it all. The more coverage, the less truth content and practical usefulness.

Radio Patapoe is an obscure, illegal, homemade station which doesn't wish to measure itself by adult criteria. There is enough information that hasn't yet been spread. It might be 10 days or 15 years old and can be dished up with elan, with nary a reference to "their" news. Information is always new and surprisingly timely. It is never historical because next week it will be the center of attention. And the cases never close; they keep plodding along. There are already so many data recorded that one needn't even have to look for them. They're there for the taking and they're there to be distorted. Just selectively reading from a newspaper (recent or not) rakes up so many mysterious details and pronouncements that it can be more exciting than a professional newsmagazine, which naturally never has quite the right correspondent in the right place.

Patapoe rummages in others' audio and video archives and makes amazing discoveries. Humanity is in the possession of a universal archive that the officials maintain may be unpacked only in an historically responsible way. Someone might pick out a pattern and send it around one more time as a fashion. But you never get the banal groundswell of foolishness dumped on you that a comprehensive representation would entail. Old material is meant to figure as a citation or an ornament in the contemporary scenery. Documents are not sacred objects for the Doggie Patapoe; they're there to be used.

Why the hankering for serious anti-information? So there you sit; you're right about something, but no one's told you so yet. And the chances of anyone doing so are exceedingly grim. So you scrape up all your courage and bring the truth to the fore. Everyone ignores you; but God records everything (including your program), so later your integrity will be proven. You can speculate about the long-term effect of information: in 6 years you meet someone who was really happy with your message. Or maybe not. Patapoe isn't waiting. The trouble gone to must be matched by the pleasure got from the broadcast. When your show is going haywire and you've made a mess of everything in sight and you can't hold back your laughter, it is a delight to the ear.

And fun for the listeners as well. The dialectic of boredom and fascination is ruptured for a moment. The desecration of Information, to everyone's surprise, does not lead to disbelief. You can test your rock-solid principles without having to sell them down the river. Only those who are tired of thinking and have firmly determined their values long ago will fear this.

At Patapoe information is corroded, thrown to the winds and shaken out. Many see such an attack as a physical threat. You betray comrades who feel that their position as information provider is endangered, and you are either heralded as a decadent art movement or dismissed as an amateur. The world situation is so precarious that no static may be introduced. These voices mute themselves at any overwhelming success. The approach ensures a blurry listener profile. The shady format opens ears that had been closed.

The theory of relativity applied to the phenomenon of information is the supporting foundation of every sovereign medium. The listener need not be served, and decides which medium he or she will consume. When one news item has a lock on 20 channels, there's no reason to become the twenty-first. You then run a great risk of reiterating rubbish. It is impossible to give an objective view of the world. To suggest otherwise is what prevents official as well as alternative media from drawing their own conclusions. In our business, opinions and facts freely intermingle. Sovereignty in the ether means nothing more or less than daring to determine according to your own taste what will be on the agenda. Without paying heed to an imaginary (movement) audience, editorial board, ideology or formula. This sounds logical, but is practiced nowhere. This rule should be made part of the universal declaration of human rights! Everyone is a broadcaster and a potential radio personality who can communicate across the spectrum. Paternalistic media that know what is of General Interest need to be shouted down and drowned in an all-out din.

Patapoe and multirationality -- one future. People know what's in their best interest. Multirationalism is a vote of confidence for the listeners. After all, information can be filtered out of any sound. The message might be unequivocal, but everyone will interpret it differently regardless. One will hear a sloppy microphone technique, a whiny voice, a detail that pricks up the ears. Another will hear only the sensational highlights; a third fixates on the idea behind it all; the next waits for something that never comes. How many fellow creatures are listening in the way that the radiomaker imagines they are? Precious few. Multirationality implies that the other cannot be fathomed, or reduced to a submissive receiver.

A message generally consists of many layers of information which affect interpretation. The Multirat medianaut is unfailingly aware of the following laws and sees through every camouflage:

• The fact that there is air time for the message (or not).
  By scanning other channels you can figure out which topics are neglected or fall entirely out of the picture. A news story from two weeks ago turns out to have no follow-up, though things have been in no way resolved.
  
  
• The length of an item (the importance attached to it).
  The more attention the better, one would think. The most important news of the day takes the most time and squeezes out other topics. The question is: did this cover story really belong on this day? Wasn't squeezing out other things really the point of all the hot footage? Be suspicious whenever there's a major event that may occupy public opinion.
  
  
• The choice of words (the news provider's ideological freight).
  The faster news travels over the world, the less deviation there will be from the original wording. Live broadcasts cannot be simultaneously stamped in an ideological mold. That can only be done later. In fact things are copied out and parroted more and more. The terms that the Turkish government uses for "the" Kurds get universally adopted. For the "race riots" in Los Angeles the phrase "multicultural bread riots" would have been much more applicable. The German police call antifascists "leftist anarchists." Behind every word hides an ideological universe. Not once does a term get used by accident. Here is a job for hermeneutic anarchism that will set a never-ending analysis in motion (which will be interrupted by the sampler resistance).
  
  
• The tone in which things are read.
  This determines believability. Every report can be made ridiculous through the use of speaking techniques. A scoffing intonation or the repeating of sentences is almost demagogic and can make a story quite chilling. And then there are the subliminal techniques for keeping the unconscious busy.
  
  

No wonder information does not flow linearly from one brain to the other. The usual channels treat information only as text to be transmitted. Though the other layers of information are not recognized, they definitely influence the listener nonetheless. Behind the daily ration of de-formation one might suspect a conspiracy. You could also see it as a ritual, or as helpless fumbling. Patapoe researches these layers and plays with them; which is not to say anyone can escape them. A good program is just as manipulative as a bad one. How convincing a program is depends on the degree to which you have knowledge of the laws. A well-meaning mistake on one of the levels can be enough to undermine the whole thing. Placing your own good name and the listeners' listening habits in doubt is a rewarding business.

Another aspect of multirationality is excessive lies and promises. The audience has no problem with this and is not offended if the truth comes out or the promise is not fulfilled. The grand gesture is valued, but no one really expects to get anything out of it, as is usual in advertisement, love and politics. Lunatic radio, in contrast, does not live for unmitigated appreciation. This turns most listeners off, but the chance few extract fruitful information from it. Previous knowledge or interest makes them able to appreciate the nonsense for what it is. These eccentrics have nothing in common with each other: when you put craziness on the air, you transgress boundaries of age, scenes, ideologies, because the message is not put into the familiar codes. This can deregulate group behavior quite a bit.

All the mechanisms of selection and distortion that are unleashed on information also apply to music. Bands that are not part of the music monopoly are not broadcast. Media attention is directly related to sales figures, except when artists that sell well start making critical noises, which results in structural neglect in favor of their "safe" colleagues. In the economic system of composer, lyricist, performing artist, record label, radio station and record store, the record bigwigs hold the reins. Selling records will no longer make any artist rich; only concerts make money. Composer and lyricist pay dearly to protect their copyrights, but make nothing unless their creations sell in astronomical numbers. Radio stations must pay duties for music, but they can choose not to. Their copyrights are not ours.

We have made friends with the invisible enemy named technology. Playing with the knobs yourself (or even what's behind them) during broadcasts gives insight into the possibilities of the medium and the modus operandi of other media. Dependence on the engineering department is surrounded with much liturgy for us, while elsewhere technicians make their appearance only when there's a disturbance. The do-it-yourselfers are in permanent contact with the vague spheres that surround audio technology, since they have one foot drifting in the air and one firmly on the ground. Technology is not a holy place or a black box; it's an accessory to recreation that nominally enlarges the freedom of what the Japanese call the "convenient life of the new human people." The equipment is fought and vanquished, and then used comfortably in versatile ways. So it needn't figure in a performance concerning the destructiveness and power of technology.

We expect that everyone will become multirational, at least outside the range of Radio Patapoe. But within hearing range Patapoe may only be understood through its transmitter. Publicity does not solve problems; it merely gives you a false feeling of significance. That would be a pity. You'd either get crapped on, or you'd be unable to live up to your own hype. What's left is an alliance with like-minded people. Patapoe does not seek connections or ask for solidarity. This improves our cooperation with driven weirdos from the multimedia mill. In our meeting-free work environment, where the directors must slave away the hardest, consensus is dismissed as imaginary and the free association of sovereigns is allowed to do its work. The organizational model keeps pressure on the workers as low as possible in the interest of good feelings.

Multirationality helps us stand up better to a young world.