Helen Louise Thorington (November 16, 1928 – April 13, 2023) was an American radio artist, composer, performer and writer. She was also the founder of New Radio and Performing Arts (1981), a nonprofit organization based in New York City; the founder and executive producer of New American Radio (1987-1998); and the founder and co-director of Turbulence.org (1996–2016).
Thorington began composing in 1974; her first works were aired on National Public Radio on such programs as Options, Voices in the Wind, and All Things Considered. In 1978, she began composing music for dance, collaborating with Bill T. Jones, Arnie Zane, and Lois Welk. She has performed nationally, including at Kennedy Center, Jacob's Pillow, Dance Theatre Workshop, and The Kitchen. Thorington began creating Internet art in the mid-1990s, co-producing several multimedia, hypertext narratives and networked performances that culminated in an installation of the seminal work, Adrift, at The New Museum in 2001.
Early life and education
Helen Thorington (nickname "Teedy") was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Richard Wainwright Thorington and Katherine Louise (Moffat) Thorington, and sister of Richard W. Thorington Jr. She was a graduate of The Baldwin School, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania and Wellesley College (1950). After graduating with a BA in Biblical History, and attending Union Theological Seminary, New York (1951), Thorington discovered her passion for English literature. She studied English Literature at the University of Minnesota (1956-1958); continued with Special Studies in the English Comic Novel taught by John Bayley (writer), New College, Oxford University, England (1959-1961); and completed coursework for a PhD in English literature at Rutgers University (1965-1967). She compiled the index for Growth and Culture: A Photographic Study of Balinese Childhood by Margaret Mead, and worked as a copy editor at G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Death
Thorington died of complications of Alzheimer's disease on April 13, 2023, at the age of 94.
Career
Writing
Thorington wrote and published experimental fiction and art criticism. The Story, which aired on Public Radio in 1979, was published in Chelsea 36 (1977) and Chelsea 38 (1979). Written in 1977, The Author's Story (November 15) was published in Lost Areas by Oil Books, Sugar Run, Pennsylvania. The Longest Story: A Work in Progress for Adding Machine Tape (1975) was published in Sixth Assembling/A Collection of Otherwise Unpublishable Manuscripts, compiled by Henry Korn, Richard Kostelanetz and Mike Metz. In February 2021 her essay “The Making of American Radio Art” was published in PAJ (journal) by MIT Press.
Rip on/off (Switzerland) published a collection of Thorington's texts, Il est si difficile de trouver le commencement, in 2017. Thorington co-authored with Jacki Apple the limited edition artist's book, The Tower in 2015; published in Contemporary Music Review; and was commissioned by Tate Modern, London (2008) to write Radio, Art, Life: New Contexts. Her essays have been published in several books, including First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game and Unsitely Aesthetics - Uncertain Practices In Contemporary Art.
Sound Art
Radio
Thorington found her way to sound through her writing. After publishing Adventures at Frog Hollow in 1973, she was invited to produce a musical version for Towanda Performing Arts, Towanda, Pennsylvania. Having no musical experience, she learned how to use an EML 101 Synthesizer and began creating her own compositions, including Trying to Think (1974) which influenced such artists as Laurie Anderson and Jacki Apple. Later, she began doing her own Field recordings − bats, oil pumps, trains, parrots, frogs − which she mixed with her synthetic sounds, her own and others' voices, and solo improvisations by musicians such as violinist Aurora Manuel ("Piece for Oil Pump and Violin"); cellist Deidre Murray ("Dracula's Wives"); and accordionist Guy Klucsevek ("North Country").
Thorington described her approach to sound this way: "My focus ... has been on radiophonic space. One of the things that distinguishes the electronic media is the ability to separate sound from its source, to remove environmental sound from its location, vocal sound from a person; to be able to cut, manipulate, and alter it in the creation of another kind of work. I liken this to the science of gene manipulation. We've reduced — or, I as a practicing radio artist, reduce — sound to sound data. I am not concerned that it's music, that it's an environment, that it's voice."