The SLEPPET CD is now available! This is a double cd with the artists from the SLEPPET exhibitions. Released by the fresh new label +3db.
Finally we have finished the rigging and mounting of the exhibition here in Oslo. Here are some pictures of the final result. Adriana and Jørgen returns to Bergen and other Lydgalleriet shows, leaving the gallery guards Mari, Marianne and Marius to meet the Oslo audience.
Yesterday the mounting of the pieces started. Today Natasha is already finished in the first floor, since she has to focus on another installation in Kanonhallen. Marc and Bjarne is at the ground floor and Jana at the loft. Steve gets a dampened black room in the second floor and Chris is in the basement. The documentation is in the ground floor. It is very good to have everything in one house, and the sound spill is not too bad.
Ulf, Trond, Kristoffer, Marius and Arild is taring down the ceilings in the ground and the first floor. We filled three of these containers and still there is more to clear out.
We are moving into Møllergata 13 in Oslo to prepare the building for the exhibition.
Møllergata 13 is an old furniture store and has low ceilings. No good for our elavated sound art, but look what we found above the lowered ceilings!
Here are pictures of the spaces prepared for Natasha and Chris.
Wonderful opening. Lots of people, the rain stopped for a while and Gunnar Michelsen had the 1907 engine running outside Galleri 3,14. Here are some pictures taken by Thor Brødreskift.
On my third day back in Bergen I had an appointment with Siren Steen at the Grieg Archive in the National Library. I brought the historic Grieg score that my girlfriend and I found in our cellar. The score will be archived with a paper saying: “Donated by Cornelia Franke and Marc Behrens, Aug 29, 2007″.
Marc and Bjarne arrived today and started their mounting. Ivan came with Bjarne and helped him with the big picture.
Jana has mounted her equipment on the wall, mixers and computer and cables. Natasha left today for Nordic Music Days, so she has finished her carefully measured speaker setup. The spatialisation is amazing. The only light in the 150 sq meter room will be small LEDs on the floor, like the one on the picture.
Thanks to the wonderful persons who carried Marc’s 3 tons of stones up the stairs at Galleri 3,14.
Lydgalleriet is expanding to include the adjacent building, Østre Skostredet 5. The spaces’ interior walls have been torn down, exposing the old building structures. The team had to do a lot of cleaning to get the dust levels down.
I took a picture at Brenndalsbreen, I liked this picture, and then I thought of a technique I had seen at our neonmaker in Shanghai. I have now printed the picture at black plexi glass. Behind the picture I have computer controlled neon lights. When the lights are off, it´s just a black surface, but when I turn up the lights, I will get different colours, and it will almost be like a 3D picture. There are offcourse also sounds to the picture.
In pitch black darkness a heron landed next to me while I was recording the haddock grunts 5 meters down by Langevaag at Bømlo. Bømlo is where the Hardanger Fjord meets The North Sea. It was a mesmerising experience, – one of many on the four trips I have been in the region of Hardanger for the installation I am calling: +4°C – from Folgefonna to the North Sea. I have been rowing, driving, climbing, and walking to fetch the sounds from the Folgefonna Glacier, from the waterways in the walleys leading down to Rosendal and further down into the the Hardangerfjord.
6 hours walks to reach the blue ice cravasses of the Folgefonna, the sound 25 meters down was powerfull, as was the fragile dripping and cracking on the surface delicate and sensitive. There have been so may pleasent surprices on the trips – the amount of fish chatter in the Hardangerfjord, – even the sound of snails when they slowly move across the rugged stones, or shells digging their way into the sand.
In addition to the trips to the Hardanger Fjord this summer I have been to Greenland, though to comment or try to explain the dimensions and impression the icefjords gave is useless, though I will just reccomend to go there. In the Icefjord by Ilulissat the crackeling, melting sounds underneathe surface was amazing, the humpback whale, the calving of the inland ice into the Disco bay… – and just to sit by the fjord to rest the ear and eye upon the ice mountain drifting past…I will melt in some of these impressions in to the piece for Sleppet.
The last time to the Folgefonna glacier, last week, the weather was amazing, and the ice had changed a lot since the last time, a month ago, – glaciers feels like huge organic living creature that changes expression and caracter each time you visit. This time I also recorded Åsmund Bakke, the glacier guide at Folgefonni Breførerlag, when he told stories and myths from the glacier, and how it came to be there.
My glacier walking boots has become to fit my feet very well by now.. and they will not be left on the shelf.
Looking forward to see you all in Bergen and in Oslo.
Today Steve’s reconstructed/renamed map of Gloppen arrived after 4 anxious days. 4 days all the way from Pasadena to Laksevåg is pretty fast! No stop in the customs, either, probably because of Steve’s modest pricing…
It is a marvelous piece, full of wonder and humor, I explored it for a long time, constantly finding new aspects, thoughts and connections. I am looking forward to see the and hear the other parts of his work for the exhibition.
After some time in Switzerland and France I came back to check on the programming and interface progress. All motors are running and the interface is working, so I decided on the structure of the events that will occur in the installation. Next week, the installation will be completed and packed.
And just before leaving for holidays we thoroughly cleaned up the cellar and found an old Edvard Grieg score (Bryllupsdag på Troldhaugen), apparently a leftover from my girlfriend’s grandparents. It bears the word “Kriegsausgabe” as a mark in the corner and apparently stems from the First World War. Funny coincidence. We are planning to donate it to the Grieg archive in Bergen.
In early June I built a small-scale model for the installation and made first tests with a regular 230V motor (not a step motor) in order to construct a mechanism to move the stones. I am collaborating with Egon Kurth on the mechanical construction. Egon has a workshop on a big ex-factory site, and I am renting storage space on his property since early 2006. We met to plan the construction of my installation in the second week of June. As it turned out, the 230V motor creates several problems. So we planned to use step motors. They can be controlled accurately, and their movements and positions can be measured. The solution for the motor control will be a custom-made software for the actual events and an interface board that can store the program without having to use a computer for the installation. For programming and for the interface I am collaborating with Karl Kliem and David Scharf. Karl has already helped me several times. He is mainly doing video, interactive audiovisual installations and web projects.
It seems that I might not be able to do the “crystal” object, because of budget reasons.
…and, oh – I forgot: There is an Alexander Behrens in the Grieg family tree displayed at Grieg’s home. Funny to see, although I doubt we are related at all…
In April I came to Norway with a preformulated concept for the Sleppet exhibition. Luckily, what I saw, heard and experienced during the marvellous 10 days of the journey only helped to verify my thoughts.
The idea is to build an artificial rubble field (therefore stones will be collected at Votedalen). Some of the stones in that rock bed will be actuated by small step motors and then produce very subtle sounds, not unlike someone (something) walking over stone rubble. The piece would not contain any other sound source than the pure movement of the stones. It is an idea that occurred to me the previous Summer hiking in the Swiss Alps. Once having come across the ideal spot there at the Wiwannihorn (Wallis, at almost 3000 meters), the difficulty now is to mediate between its memory and the circumstances in the exhibition defined by mechanical limits, production costs, transport fees…
Just shortly before leaving for the Sleppet recording trip I also thought of a second part of the installation, counterpart to the rock bed (which symbolizes raw energy to be discovered): a crystal shape, a condensation of the essence, a product of energy, filled with speakers on various sides, reevaluating ideas for multichannel playback – since all sound would come from one object, projecting in various angles. It could “contain” a composition made of some of the recordings from the recording trip. It would hang from the ceiling of the exhibition space, whereas the rock bed would lie on the ground.
All of this is going to be defined (and hopefully built) in June.
There are two types of sound on this planet, nature sound and cultural sounds. On our trip with Sleppet we recorded the sounds of spring, and nature was giving us new experiences every day. When I came to Bergen I was wondering which cultural sounds Grieg might have heard living in Bergen. I met Gunnar Mikkelsen who collects old engines. We had a great time recording one of his oldest engines, that was on a boat in Bergen at the turn of the century. It is a nice exercise for my mind to think of which cultural sounds, man made sounds, that were heard around Bergen in 1907. The sound of nature is maybe almost the same, but the cultural sounds have changed dramatically during the last 100 years.
“…the rain … forces us to withdraw into ourselves, and this inwardness makes our soul infinitely more sensitive. the very noise rain produces continuously occupies the ear, awakes attentiveness and keeps us on the alert…the solitude and silence it spreads out around the traveler… makes these impressions more distinct… ” the notebooks of joseph joubert (1754-1824)
as we arrived at the small lake at the foot of the glacier i was so overwhelmed by the form and the blue of the thing in front of me that i had absolutely no sense of what to record. almost mechanically, i plugged a contact mic into one of my small digital recorders and dropped the mic and much of the cable into the water. i pressed record and walked away just as it began to gently rain.
as i walked along the rocks at the water’s edge, staring at the giant blue mass in front of me, i had no idea what the microphone would capture and how the recording would eventually reflect upon my memory of these first few moments of the journey.
i never use headphones when i’m recording, so i generally have no idea what i might capture (for i want the end result to be a new and somewhat unfamiliar listening experience). as i walked along the lake, staring at the patterns the rain was making on the otherwise still surface of the water, the sounds of the rain certainly evoked the solitude and inwardness joubert wrote about.
for me, recording a moment like this, is not about capturing a specific sound or body of sounds; as much as it is about physically capturing a certain moment in time. even if the glacier, the lake, and the rain do not end up audible or recognizable in the recording; i feel that their mystical presences have been captured, even if they exist beneath the audible surface. (and perhaps following on the idea of some cultures who believe a photograph can capture one’s soul even though that soul would remain invisible in the final photograph – i tend to believe the act of recording is about more than just the sounds one is hearing at the time of recording, or later at the time of listening back to it.)
on my final day, in a hotel in bergen, again, it began to rain. this time, i was in the unremarkable landscape of my hotel room, staring out the window at a relatively unremarkable building facade across the street. at this point, after recording almost 15 hours of material, i figured i had made enough recordings. yet, the rain patterns on the windows and the sills were quite beautiful and it suddenly seemed to make some kind of sense to unpack my gear and end the recordings just as they had begun… with the rain.
Some extreme wet and windy weather features on my recordings. Although the past days here in Oslo have been marked by storminess, the difference between the two sound-scapes is quite pronounced.
In preliminary sketches I have first experimented with creating a third-order ambisonics spatialised ‘wet-rockface scene’ from enhanced 4-ch close mic recordings. The idea being to take a large number of angles and distances from many sound-sources such as photo-1 and recreate a 3-D sound-scene that may evoke something like photo-2. The results so far are very different from a normal ambisonics environmental recording. Current tests sound like a complete environment being placed under a microscope. Later I’ll try to create a HRTF version for stereo headphone listening and post on the site.
400 Artists in Oslo opend their studios and project spaces last weekend. I used the oportunity to test some of the sounds we recorded. It was great to see how people liked to gather and stay inside the four speaker space.
Tomorrow it is the Norwegian national day. Norway has 1800 marching bands that will play from 06.00 tomorrow morning. I will record some of it and might post you a sample here later.
Saturday was the last day of the stay in Bergen (except for Steve, who left on Monday). Chris, Jana and Bjarne went to Lysekloster at 4 AM to record the morning chorus of birds. The weather was perfect and they found a good spot to record. The day went by with individual interviews by Jørgen and preparation for the presentation of Sleppet at Landmark. After the presentation, the group had their last dinner together and socialized with the locals.
Friday Chris and Bjarne went to Lysekloster to find good locations for recording the next morning, while Marc and Steve visited the Grieg Collection at the public library. In the evening we all went to Troldhaugen, Grieg’s home. A concert was going on in the villa and Bjarne recorded the music from outside. Steve was interested in the atmosphere and sounds inside the composer’s cabin, and got the rare opportunity to do so, thanks to the generous people at Troldhaugen.
Thursday the group made recording early in the morning and then left for the final trip to Bergen. On the way we stopped the boat and drifted while Chris and Jana made hydrophonic recordings in the deep waters of Sognefjorden. Arriving in Bergen, Chris and Bjarne met the ornithologist Frode Falkenberg to learn about possible bird recording locations in the Bergen area. At eight the director of Grieg07, Ragna Sofie Grung Moe, invited us to a marvelous dinner at her apartment.
Wednesday we went to Utvær, the westernmost island in Norway. (I am writing this in Bergen, since there is no internet at Utvær.) From here, there is nothing but water all the way to Shetland, some 200 nautical miles away. There was some wind, but a clear sun made the trip a completely other experience than the trip with Natasha. The boatman Egil Røed took us safely through the shallows surrounding Utvær. Landing there we met the owner of the islands, Torald Storøy, such a wonderful person who helped us carry all the gear to the house. His presence made our stay delightful, even if the wind was hard. Later we went on a sightseeing with Torald as our guide. In the lighthouse was a very special moment, when everyone recorded the sound of the moving lenses simultaneously. The wind made the power lines sing in a beautiful way, and we spent some time listening to them and recording them. On the south side of the island, the daughter of the last lighthouse keeper is still taking care of the most wonderful place, like a northern Japanese garden. She calls it Paradise, which is understandable since it is one of the few places without much wind. We spent some time there. The trip ended up at the the northern part of the island, with some rough climbing and jumping on the sharp conglomerate rock.
Steve and Bjarne walked to a summer shed in the mountain and stayed there all day. The recordings they made were of ants, sheep and found objects like rusty metal tools and squeaking door hinges.
After a visit at Bjarne Bø’s farm, Marc went to Votedalen with Jørgen and Are Frode, to figure out what kind of stones that will go into his project. The stones had to be weighted to find the mass of a square meter of one layer of stone, so he will know how much the complete work will weight.
Later in the day, Marc recorded in the sand quarry where the stones were constantly falling and rolling down the slopes.
After the exhausting trip on the glacier, everyone had a quiet day in the forest, recording birds and the surroundings. Are Frode’s father is a good chef and made us a delicious dinner. In the late evening the group gathered at Jørgen and Marc’s cabin to have a listen to the day’s catch.
Marc was recording the water dripping at the glacier front, when an unexpected calving happened just meters away from him. Listen to the sound:
In terrific weather, we climbed Brenndalsbreen in Oldedalen, considered one of the less accessible (marked black) of the 52 Glacier arms of Jostedalsbreen. Nevertheless, this is one of the most spectacular ones, with the roaring stream of avalanches from the main glacier, some 800 meters above. The sense of scale is totally lost in these vast ice and snow formations, but one might get a feeling of the size by watching the video of the avalanche and listening to the sound. Steve was accidentally recording the avalanche with his camera, while Jana was recording the sound much closer.
We had to use ropes, to secure us from falling into the deep cracks. While we were at the glacier we witnessed some 20 smaller avalanches. Marc and Bjarne went to record by the glacier front, while the others went further in on top of the ice.
A short excerpt of Jana Winderen’s underwater recordings of mating frogs.
The sun was drying the moss and melting the ice on Røskleivvatnet (a small lake). The frogs were gathering and mating and Jana got some amazing underwater recordings of two rivals. Chris and Bjarne were collecting bird sounds, while Marc focused on brooks and forest streams. Steve used contact mics and his violin bow on a tree.
Today’s video:
Svein Hjelmeset seems to know every bird in the Gloppen area. He knows where they nest and when they arrive, how many there are of each specie and so on. He is a big contributer to the web page Geoatlas.no, which among many things, maps the birds in two counties in Norway, Sogn og Fjordane (where Sandane is) and Finnmark. The vision is that all counties in Norway uses this service to map the nature in their region, building a large database of the Norwgegian nature, based upon local observations.
Chris was very interested in finding good spots for bird recordings and Svein was of great help. The two of them chatted for an hour after dinner on Friday, accompanied by the rest of the group.
During the night, Chris recorded the birds on the sandbanks at Sandane. A short piece of that is on the top of this post.
Jana Winderen: Excerpt from hydrophone recordings of the glacier.
At a place where every glimpse is a postcard worthy, the group got the chance to get really close to the Briksdalsbreen glacier. Thanks to Halvard, the glacier guide, and good weather conditions, the cracking of ice and snow and the sound of melting and slowly moving structures got it’s way onto our hearts and harddisks. The most spectacular part of the trip so far was rewarding, both sound wise and as an experience for the artists.
The sense of scale is easily lost when you are watching pictures of this gigantic structure. Natasha and Jana brought hydrophones – underwater microphones – to record the sound of the ice melting and moving through the water. This is the last day of Natasha’s trip, as she heads back to Oslo to prepare for her New York concert.
A video of the group at the glacier gives some idea about the trip and different recording strategies:
Bjarne, Steve and Jana arrived Sandane today. After some hiking and recording in the woods, we had dinner at Gloppen Hotel. A nice meal with the meat from goat kid and trout. Above the table was the bell lamp that in our mythology inspired Grieg to write the piece “Klokkespill” – Bell Ringing (Lyric pieces, Opus 54). A short improvisation was irresistible. Participants: Bjarne, Steve, Jana and Natasha.
Today we visited Bjarne Bø, one of three farmers that run the fellesfjøs at Bø. 80 cows and 20 sheep did their best to make it into Natasha’s sound installation. Back at the base camp, Natasha made a compressed version of the sounds for Are’s cell phone, just to discover that the “Moo is in the bass.”
Today we visited the reason for the name of this village: The sandpit in the middle of the valley is the remains of the huge glacier that carved out the valley thousands of years ago. Beautiful rounded rocks of all sizes and lots of sand is now being taken out by Eide Sandtak.
Natasha is interested in avalanche structures, so this was a perfect spot to test her courage with the combination of falling rocks and expensive electronics.
I caught up with Natasha and Are Frode at Sandane today. They were a bit blown through by the extreme weather at Utvær, but happy. The Cabins that we rent are at the beach facing the fjord. Red and typical Norwegian. Totally kitchy scenery, embarrassingly beautiful. Seaguls, kjell, vibe and ducks are nesting nearby.
During the day, Natasha made four track and stereo recordings of lots of dripping water in the misty mountains surrounding Sandane.
In the evening it was time for some sheep recordings at a small farm nearby.
Natasha and Are Frode went to Utvær on Sunday. The wind was so powerful, the boatman had to get a bigger boat to be able to fight it and the waves on the way out. Utvær is the westernmost lighthouse in Norway and is no longer manned.
Wind and rain is obviously the main ingredients of the Utvær Recordings…
