"Langjøkull, Snaefellsjøkull, Solheimajøkull" by Katie Paterson is ice records made from ice from three glaciers in Iceland. They are played until they melt.
The sound recordings are field recordings from each glacier melting. The sound records is then made by casting the record of each field recording (the vinyl shape) in silicon and made by freezing the meltwater in the forms. The records are then played on three turntables until they melt. This takes nearly two hours.
The ice is played and the sound you hear at the start is the first melting of the water while at the same time you can hear the ice dissolving melting the water a second time around. You can hear the sound here at Katie Paterson's website.
My fascination of the sea has obviously not yet been satisfied by «POLARSTAR».
Since my last project I’ve been occupied by the shape of mountains and waves and how they can relate to optical sound. The saw-toothed shape ofmountains of, for example, the Lofot Isles can easily be associated with the unilateral variable area soundtrackthat is one of the 3 most used forms of optical soundtrack on film. And by playing such a shape would have a sound close to [e]. On the other hand the sleek sine curve shape of a wave would resemble the sound close to [a].
The funny thing I discovered is that the shape of steep mountains visually looks more than captial A, than E, and a linje of minuscule handwritten e’s looks more like waves than a line of a’s.
So the sounds wants it the other way around.
Blame the incorrectness on the Roman alphabet.
Since the project is all about letters and 2D material (no speakers in sight), it has turned from musique concrete to concrete poetry in shapes, patterns and typography. The ship rolling around an axis parallel to or crossing the direction of motionalmost give a vertical movement at rough seas where you see and do not see the horizon of mountains.
”Horizon, no horizon. (The poetry of) Repetitive Vertical Movement (at sea)” is first shown at Oslo National Academy of the Arts’ christmas calendar of fine arts December 3rd curated by Tito Frey and Mohamed Fadlabi.
For my last exhibition «POLARSTAR» I produced an artist book to be included as both a traditional catalogue but also as an art piece. As the exhibition discusses the point where formalism and narrativity collides, the hidden narrative is presented in the booklet.
It is a nice little booklet (16 pages) where part one includes a text by Jeremy Welsh, documentation of work, contact info and a biography. Part two is the artist book itself, with photos and text about «POLARSTAR»'s background.
The puurdy design is done by Jennifer Wiseman in Spijkenisse (Holland) and was printed by the magnificent print shop Extrapool in Nijmegen (Holland).
It's for sale for 50 NOK/ €5/ $8/ £5 (shipping included). Send your requests to cbjordheimATgmailDOTcom.
Besides my own work I want to use this blog to present shows and works I've a particular interest in. It might be something close to what I do myself or something quite opposite.
I visited this show "APPARATUS" at Lydgalleriet in Bergen, Norway a couple of weeks ago, curated by Carsten Seiffarth. The main piece is Martin Riches and Erwin Stache's "Talking Machine" (1990) which produces human speech. The audience uses a computer to write down sentences for the machine to pronounce. 32 organ pipes shaped in the correct resonating shape of a human voice is being played. The machine triggers the air system signals that opens up the organ pipes syllable by syllable (or sound by sound). As the organ pipes are all tuned in the same tone height, every word is pronounced in a monotone way without any intonation. However, the machine holds a vocabulary of three hundred English words and it can also count to 100 in English, Danish, German and Japanese.
The shape of the organ pipes makes me think about Rudolph Pfenninger's try-out for a hand drawn human voice and his shapes on optical sound on analogue film in Munich 1932. Pfenninger's sounds are photographed paper with sound-curves drawn on them to represent each note of the soundtrack graphically. In that way one can use this on the optical sound track and have a human voice.
4.014 The gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, the sound waves, all stand in the same internal representational relationship to one another that obtains between language and the world. —Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus (1921)
The show "POLARSTAR" is looking at avantgarde and new-modernist ideas based upon the argument all visual has sound. "POLARSTAR" follows the sound trail of legendary Norwegian sealer M/S Polarstar. The sound works are the optical soundtrack based on harbour- and sea maps. The sound is found by using the 16mm analogue film where one physically can glue on visual elements and have it read as sound. The topography at sea and the typography of the explanatory symbols of the nautical navigational charts has been scanned and made into sound. This way we are able to hear distances and places. What you see is what you hear.
As a viewer and consumer of media and of art especially, one is expecting it to have a logic of narrativity. The need to find a story, a narrative and something solid in even the most abstract work of art, and maybe in particular when fronting sound works is present at all times. Formalism and narrativty comes together in "POLARSTAR" trying to find out where these parameteres (of art) collides. Including the old, outdated and possibly dying media of 16mm film "POLARSTAR" can be looked upon as an anachronic and nostalgic way of looking at objects, but when these objects are combined with conceptual ideas a new body of knowledge is produced.
Opening: November 6th, 8 p.m. Adress: Rom8, Vaskerelven 8, Bergen, Norway. Opening hours: Tuesday- Sunday, 12-4 p.m., November 7th-15th. Hope to see you there!
Musique concrète is music made by real sounds from everyday life. The compositional material in Musique concrète is not bound up to sounds performed by musical instruments or elements that traditionally is looked upon as "musical" i.e melody, harmony, rythm etc. The theoretical grounds of Musique concrète was made by Pierre Schaeffer in the 40s. The Musique concrète composers of the 40s had great knowledge about the media of radio and was using the magnetic tape in their compositions.
Walter Ruttman (1887 -1941) was the first person to create the first film without visual elements in 1928 with the piece made by optical sound entitled "Weekend". The sound piece is a 11 minute sound montage that describes a journey to the countryside; The train leaves the city of Berlin and ends up in a soundwise calmer rural area. In "Weekend" he cut and spliced together elements of optical sound long before the magnetic tape was invented. This was later referred to as "Cinema pour l'oreil" (cinema for the ears), a term derived from the accusmatic principal by Pythagoras meaning music created by the ears where you can not see the actions behind the sounds. By including the word "cinema" one seem to move in the direction of the narrative sphere where impressions from the eye, narrative or abstract, matter.
In order to sustain the autonomy of the film or sound, it is interesting how the elements of narrativity and the piece it self, is being separated from each other. Where is the point where abstract/autonomous film and sound is moving towards something figurative/narrative, and are these contradictions sustainable when it comes to narrativity? Where does narrativity meet plain formalism and the other way around? Where does this collide? Like in Ruttmans "Weekend" a journey or a voyage can be movement in representational or abstract distances. A journey kan appear in sound, in time or in a story in a movie, theater or literature. The main element in the project I'm working with now, POLARSTAR, is the reading of typography and topography. I want to hear the sound that appears when following a map in optical sound. It is the visual representation of the map and the landscape that creates the sound you hear -the real and direct sound of a geographical spot or a journey.
The title POLARSTAR also gives an entry to a far bigger narrative -a specific time, a specific voyage, a specific distance.
This silent 16mm film by Marcel Broodthaers based upon the French book with the same title holds a nostalgic and poetic, but still pedagogic document to the history of seamanship. Dividing and at the same pairing the past and the modern, painting and photo but also shipping and the sea as the main commercial route in the ninetheenth century versus the modern sailing as a leisure activity in the twentieth century. The paging of the images shows a linear shape to the film, but the narrative itself is more or less a non-linear narrative and structualist way of filmmaking that undermines the narrative function: The story that doesn't really tell a story. The form can resemble a slide show and is thus also challenging the media of film by using still images - a display of the pages in a book as the holding visual element.
Rough sketch for a piece in my next project to be presented at Rom 8 in Bergen, Norway November 6th-15th.
A 16mm Steenbeck editing table in the center of the installation displays a film loop of waves filmed at Hoek van Holland May 2009. The waves goes on to sound by a opto-electrical synthesis connected to the screen picking up the differences in the light density and transforms the amount of light to voltage and sound. You are then hearing the sound of the waves simultaneously while watching the loop. On the editing table itself there is attached an old fashioned EKG, electrocardiograph, that normally measures the electrical activity in the heart of a person and records such activity as a visual trace. This EKG picks up electrical impulses from the editing table and conveys those signals to wave shaped graphs on paper. The paper continues to flow from the EKG producing waves of paper out in the gallery space. Like this the waves will go through several stages; first as light and photons to sound waves to electrical impulses to waves scribbled by the EKG to wave shaped paper.
Lately I've been occupied with listening to and studying the works of Daphne Oram (1925-2003). Oram was a British composer working with self-made synthesizers. She developed her own system based upon hand drawn sound techniques, which she named "Oramics".
"This method of music composition was intended by Oram to allow a composer to be able to draw an "alphabet of symbols" on paper and feed it through a machine that would, in turn, produce the relevant sounds on magnetic tape." (Wikipedia)
She also used musique concrète techniques, for use in its programming. The first drawn sound composition using the Oramics machine, entitled "Contrasts Essonic", was recorded in 1968. She was founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the first to compose scores only produced by electronic sources.
Besides having lectures on electronic music and studio techniques, she published in 1971 An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics which investigated electronic music in a philosophical way. You can hear samples of her music here.
In my search for the "sound trail" after M/S Polarstar; being the optical soundtrack based on harbour- and sea maps, I found some amazingly interesting sounds. The sound of topography at sea and the typography of the explanatory symbols of the nautical navigational charts also includes several harbours. Two in Greenland, two in Norway, and others in Canada, Cuba and Uruguay has been scanned and made into sound.
The following soundpiece is an harbour -a small settlement in the Eastern Greenland, Kap Tobin (Scoresby Sund/Kangertittivaq). (There's no image)
The soundpieces are to be presented in an installation at Rom 8 in Bergen, Norway this fall.
Norway's gaze upon experimental films has changed radically during the last 40 years, Stephen Dwoskin's landmark “FILM IS” survey of the Free Cinema remarking for instance in 1975 that “Scarcely any strong independent film-making activity exists among Sweden's Scandinavian neighbours. Norway, for instance, has shown virtually no films of her own”.
Arild Kristo is perhaps one of the only 'underground' norwegian filmmakers known from the 60s, with ”Kristoball” from 1967 (11min) looked upon as a genuine expression of the spirit of the time. But despite winning prizes in Berlin, MoMA snapping up his photographic work and French critics voting "Kristoball" as one of the worlds 100 most important films, Kristo was sometimes in his home country looked upon as one of Norway's all-time "most refused" filmmakers! Never receiving any grants or funding from the Norwegian state, he fled to NYC and continued his filmmaking there.
Today however's a different story, films from artists such as Bull.Miletic, Jeremy Welsh, Inger Lise Hansen, Hjørdis Kurås, Michel Pavlou, Linn Lervik, Unn Fahlstrom and Farhad Kalantary well supported and wildly screened - Farhad Kalantary actually one of the initiators of ATOPIA, a project for a Retrospective exhibition of Norwegian film and video art begun in 2007.
Cecilie Bjørgås Jordheim is Artist in Residence at WORM and is a visual artist currently working with concepts of optical sound on film, formalism vs. narrativity and Musique concréte. She's assisting the ATOPIA project for a Retrospective exhibition of Norwegian film and video art. Alongside her own work and historical works from Arild Kristo will Jordheim tonight present films from former students at the northernmost film-school in the world – Nordland College of Art and Film!
Lately my interest has been the stories of the legendary old Norwegian sealer M/S Polarstar that has been hunting in thearcticNorth Atlantic since 1949. In periods of time it has been used for several other things; for scientific studies, for passenger traffic and sysselmannsbåt (the boat of the local governor) at Svalbard, but was in 2007 back as a sealer doing traditional hunting. Lots of pictures from the 70s here. And here.
It is fascinating stories both for the historical value of it, but also when it comes to the dream of the great artic adventure. It's especially interesting because of my own personal reasons -my grandfather was the chef on board M/S Polarstar for several years.
My last project produced at Worm was a film based on the sound of a barcode.
The film was shown in an installation titled "Composition for a film projector barcode and a spotlight". The installation consists of, as the title discribes, a 16mm film projector, a spotlight and a film based on manipulating a barcode to play scales of tones. The barcode has been copied to a transparent sticker and then glued to the film all the way to the soundtrack of the film. The barcode then makes sound as it passes the photoelectric cell. By having glued on a barcode in different sizes, the barcode plays over a range of two octaves (from low to high C). The fun thing is that you can also see how the volume changes with the contrast of the lines. The more contrast the higher volume.
The film is originally 9 min. long. This extract is 45 sec., but you'll get the point.
The installation was first shown at Art Made Me Do It! in Bergen, Norway, May 2008.
The local TV-station, btv, visited my studio before the open studios event in Bergen, B-Open, 2008. This was shown at Triplet November 20th 2008. You can take a look at the interview here. Unfortunately it's not transcribed in English.
I'm back in Rotterdam again, two years since I first moved to the city. At that time as an exchange student. Now as an Artist in Residence at Worm Filmwerkplaats. There's always people I know that go to Rotterdam for some reason and this is the map I'm drawing to explain how Rotts work. Simple, but my view.
Click on it to get a bigger version that you can print and bring with you.
The gramophone record, the musical thought, the
score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal
relation, which holds between language and the world. To all of them the logical structure is common.
(Wittgenstein, 1999: 32)
Cecilie Bjørgås
Jordheim (b.1981 in Bergen, Norway) is a visual artist, conceptual poet and
composer currently working with the translation between visual and auditive
systems, concrete poetry and the concept of isomorphia.
Through
installations, visual scores and concrete poetry, Jordheim's work springs from
an interdisiplinary
agenda; between genres, fields of art and medium, and the thesis that all visual has sound. Jordheim
thematizes the human need for systematization and questions if there a direct
connection between language and the world; topography, typography, text,
architecture and sound/music. The scores are often
frame work for a collaboration with musicians, where the outcome is in the
translation between the visual and the musical improvisation.
John Cage stated that letting go of control when
composing is a spiritual and philosophic matter, that creates a bridge between
music and fine art.
Jordheim holds an MA
in fine art from Oslo National Academy of Arts (2011). Previous shows,
screenings and publications include Hayward publishing and Whitechapel Gallery
(London, UK), Kunstmuseet Nord-Trøndelag (Namsos, Norway), Signal (Malmö,
Sweden), Matrix Magazine (Montreal, Canada), Alpineum Produzentengalerie
(Luzern, Switzerland), Bury Art Museum (Bury, UK) and UBUweb. Jordheim lives
and works in Oslo, Norway.
