Mid-twentieth century radio art: The ontological insecurity of the radio text

In this article, I set Shampoos out to examine the ontological instability of mid-twentieth century artistic works written for the medium of radio that derives from the tension between transient sound and permanent text.I explore how the evanescence commonly associated with sound in general and radio in particular caused Fan Shop - NHL - Novelty mid-twentieth century radio practitioners like Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard to strive for both the simplicity of a superficially intelligible aural text and the complexity stemming from the thematisation of ambiguity and epistemological uncertainty.