In the digital age of sealed boxes, there is something spookily visceral about an old radio. The soft glow of the dials, the humming vacuum tubes … an old valve set seems comparatively alive. As you wander through the zones between broadcast stations, static can feel less like interference and more like a threshold.

Listen hard enough and long enough and you might hear something unexpected.

That possibility lies at the heart of The Enormous Radio, a new work by documentary theatre-maker Roslyn Oades and sound artist Bob Scott (The Nightline), which receives its world premiere at The Substation in Newport this September.

The Enormous Radio: Creative Technologist Kevan Atkins and project co-leader Roslyn Oades. Photo © Sarah Walker

The starting point for the project is a constellation of around 70 vintage radios, old test equipment and oscilloscopes, arranged in a circle. The atmosphere will deliberately echo that of a séance, says Scott, adding that one of the inspirations for the work is EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena), purported voices or messages detected in recordings where no voice was consciously being recorded at the time.

“I’ve been fascinated with EVP for a...