Firebirds and Tongues of Fire are two companion works that examine a power complex of inter-relationships between fire and language from a diverse variety of technical, historical and metaphorical viewpoints.

That speech is made of sound is not always apparent as we speak, listen, read and are transported to the inner recesses of conversation. But electronic media, and the radio in particular reconfigured our culture's perception of the relationship between speech and sound for most of the 20th century.

Surely the transformation of speech into signal, signal into wave, to recording and playback make apparent that meaning is forever cast as sound, sound as signal, signal as noise and onward.

For all its power and terror, the course taken by the political leaders« voice is no less technological. In the end, it is only a wave in the air, a scratch in the groove. Sound with all it«s attendant artifacts of recording, transmission, reception, makes this evident.