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the spring of 1997. It was a ‘real’ networked radio: web sites with Ozone interface were located on parks.lv server there in Latvia while all the sound files were kept on RIS (Radio internationale Stadt / orang.org) server in Berlin or on xs4all.nl (Access for All!) server in Amsterdam. For E-Lab artists this was a great opportunity – given the limited financial and technical resources – to use technical equipment already connected to the Internet in other places around Europe. In turn, ELab supplied original content to the RIS server in Berlin, which was specially designed by Berlin based programmer Thomax Kaulmann as a support platform for sound art, independent radio and musicians producing alternative electronic music84 free of copyright. The day after the opening event of Ozone we received a call from a member of the National Radio and Television Board. Most likely it was because of an article about the event that journalist and musician Peteris Puritis had published in the newspaper ‘Diena’. To his question how many listeners the station had, I gladly replied that when we used xs4all.nl in Amsterdam only 25 people could connect simultaneously, but with access to the server in Berlin it would possibly support up to 400 connections at the same time. During the next forty minutes I spent my time trying to refute illegal broadcasting accusations. As it turned out, according to the Law on Radio and TV of the Republic of Latvia a broadcasting permit is not necessary, if the total number of customers (connections) does not exceed 25. And it did not matter that the broadcasting happened through servers in Berlin and Amsterdam, as the board member stated; if our physical bodies were located in Latvia we were subject to the Latvian law on broadcasting. Of course, the law did not specifically refer to ‘Internet radio’ at that time, yet theoretically it could be included in the side note ‘and other electronic mass media’. Luckily, the authorities did not take the issue of radio Ozone any further and we could continue the experiments of streaming sound online. Access to file uploading servers in Berlin and Amsterdam was a huge support, however, this did not provide live broadcasting possibilities. Therefore Internet radio Ozone worked as a real-time playback sound archive in the beginning. Initially, we published archives with recordings from live jam sessions, done together with musicians Ugis and Toms Vitins in the Ozone studio at E-Lab, inviting other musicians, singers, percussionists, artists and DJs to ‘jam’ together as well. Recording and publishing archives was a characteristic trait of early Internet radio. In the 1990s in Latvia just as in some other Eastern European countries, almost the only way to provide access to the content of sound art and music of independent producers was to publish it on the Internet. Therefore, the first Ozone web site published ambient music by the brothers Vitins, Locomotive ambient sound recordings ‘Through India, 1996’, sessions by Varka Crew and other DJs, work of the sound art piece ‘entrance01’ by Peteris Kimelis and experimental music of the Basque group Fin de Siecle, who visited Riga. The archiving did not loose its significance later on when E-Lab turned more towards live streaming. Ozone radio programs were streamed once a week on Tuesdays, but the recorded file had more listeners until the next broadcast than the real-time broadcasted program itself. The content of Ozone Internet radio nights was very diverse: from poetry and literary readings (which were organized by Orbita, a Russian poet group in Latvia, DJ Dr. Ups from Varka Crew and Vlads Jakovlevs), interviews (e.g. interviews Kaspars Vanags held with Sergejs Timofejevs, Normunds Kozlovs and E-Lab interviews with Kristine Briede and Carl Bjorsmark from the film studio Locomotive), to lectures and conference recordings (e.g. from ‘Art+Communication’ festival events). Radio
84. http://organg.organg.org.