Espen Sommer Eide

Wild Music Reserve (Pasvik)

2026-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

Espen Sommer Eide’s exhibition Wild Music Reserve (Pasvik) combines music, sound, video, and graphic prints that are results of the artist’s long-standing interest in nature reserves. Central to the exhibition is the strictly isolated Pasvik Zapovednik reserve on the Russian side of the river in Pasvik, Sør-Varanger, which operates under Soviet-style reserve thinking. The artist explores the area on several levels and opens up for an esoteric and alchemical approach.

In Search of a Sanctuary

Now that the border with Russia is closed, the reserve has, paradoxically, once again become a sanctuary for endangered species and old-growth forest, where nature is allowed to evolve freely without human interference. In a time when structures are collapsing and much is left to exploitation and extraction, Sommer Eide’s installation explores the possibility of a protected space. A hideaway unreachable by others, where intimate experiences and ways of life remain concealed and safeguarded. When the wind blows in the right direction, you can hear the music from here.

The installation is based on a series of performative experiments with remote sensing technologies, where the observer does not influence what is being examined. Examples include spatial sound field recordings, optical sound, observations of the sun and nature through various filters and lenses, as well as measurement techniques for phenomena normally invisible and inaudible to the human sensory system.

At the same time, Espen Sommer Eide explores a more open and esoteric approach through alchemy by the riverbank in Pasvik. A chemically grown piezoelectric crystal, used as a microphone for recording in the primeval forest, is documented on video. The crystal microphone functions as a sound prism between the shape of the place and the listener’s body.

The Role of Music in Art

In his artistic practice, Espen Sommer Eide works with time-based media, with music and sound as central elements. The artist takes an experimental approach to instruments, archives, places, and language.

In recent years, Sommer Eide has worked extensively in the border area between Norway, Russia, and Finland, as well as the Østensjøvannet nature reserve in Oslo. His works are grounded in networks of connections between nature, culture, history and sound in these spaces. He often does this by constructing unique instruments inspired by often forgotten pre-electronic, analog technologies, exploring the role that music can play in art.

The exhibition is supported by The Arts Council Norway, The Audio and Visual Fund, The Norwegian Fotographic Fund and Oslo Council.

On the occasion of the exhibition, here is a film that was made in which Espen Sommer Eide talks about the exhibition project and some clips of the works and sounds:

Reviews:

– Kanskje vil lyden som lagres i kunsten overleve all digitalisering, Ballade, 14.11.25
Fred i skogen, Klassekampen
Multimedialt landskapsmaleri

photos by Istvan Virag

Arkadia 02-22

2022-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Arkadia 02-22 is an audiovisual essay based on a series of travels, experiments, collaborations and performances in the Northern regions of Norway, Finland and Russia. Recorded with various equipment over the course of 20 years, the historical video and audio material are then re-composed and re-presented with the assistance of various artificial intelligence models.

The work also weaves in a number of audiovisual performances based on local everyday experiences such as cloudberry picking under the watch towers, mosquito meditations along the Pasvik river, coffee fortune telling, and investigating an old 78rpm vinyl record collection found in the attic.

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the border between Norway and Russia closed and travels and cross-border collaborations seized. In this new situation, Arkadia 02-22 also become an exploration of how to rekindle the potential of this collaboration based on archival material from 20 years of cross-border activities.

Our consciousness and memory piece together a common life-world. Our actions and movements within it make the rhythms of our imaginary home. Repetitions and rituals make us forget where it all started. But we never forget to bring our berry-picking bucket, just in case.

Watch a short preview of the full 42 minute film:

Arkadia 02-22 was premiered at the Barents Spektakel festival in Kirkenes 22, in the old industrial building “Pumpehuset”.

At BB15, Linz and Festspillene i Nord-Norge the project got an experimental appendix called “sleeping instruments”. This hybrid media-archive/live performance employ artifical intelligence in the form of machine learning technology. In the absence of musicians (following the end of the russian-norwegian cultural cooperation), the machine learning model “dreams” up new sounds based on archives contributed by Russian musicans still living in Russia.

Thank you Rural Reading Room (Kristin Tårnesvik, Hilde M. Methi, Morten Torgersrud), Venke Tørmenen, Honna Havas, Monika Sandnesmo, Neal Cahoon, Ann-Inger Sommer and many more for contributing to the archive material.

Arkadia 02-22 is one of det gode liv // The Sweetness of Living productions. It was developed in dialogue with Pikene på Broen for Barents Spektakel 2022 with additional support from Bergen Kommune, BEK, Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond and Kulturrådet.

Vertical Studies

2021-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

An ongoing collaboration between Espen Sommer Eide and Signe Lidén.

For our future shadows (2023)
a live radio montage by Vertikale Studier

Their performance started at dusk with a walk on the paths through the wetland and up to a small hill, where the live recording of a radio show was taking place. In the form of a radio montage, the two performers conducted different sound experiments alongside spoken words and recordings that were played through small speakers placed around in the trees. The sound experiments were interactions with a machine learning model trained on months of audio recordings from the wetland area. The performers used a range of acoustic instruments in order to both play with and search the achieve of sounds.

More about the latest work at Paviljong Våtmark here (scroll down):
https://paviljong.flytedokk.org/now

In their collaborations, Lidén and Eide investigate how sound is shaped by and resonates in various environments. The first iteration of the Vertical Studies, the critically acclaimed 2016 performance Altitude and History was staged in the hills above Nikel, Russia, as part of the Dark Ecology journey. Leading the audience on a performative field trip, they delved into the connections between wind and sound at various altitudes and its connections vertically to layers of local history. Local history was represented by material gathered through organising the Nikel Sound History Club.

Sound movement through the atmosphere is affected by the wind profile, the open landscape and the winter temperatures, which can bend the wave front, causing sounds to be heard where they normally would not, or vice versa, creating acoustic shadows. Building upon this archive of altitudinal sounds from Nikel and other areas visited by the artists, their next work Acoustic Shadows and Boundary Reflections centred on a new model of verticality. As an imaginative figure the artists experiment with sorting their archive of sounds by height. From the bottom of the oceans, to the planetary boundary layer with land formations and weather shaping the sounds, up through the clouds to the outer atmosphere. The work traces sounds and soundings from a specific place to a more universal sense of space. Various locations (Sint Jansklooster watertower, Fjell Festning) were in 2017 re-imagined into models of the atmosphere to study this material further.

A short video document from the Borealis festival event at Fjell festning 2017.

More info in Norwegian about Vertical Studies at Forfatternes klimaaksjon her

Photos by Pieter Kiers

Altitude and History from Espen Sommer Eide on Vimeo.

by Signe Lidén and Espen Sommer Eide

a commissioned work for Dark Ecology Journey 2016

documented by Friday Milk, Sebastian Frisch and Espen Sommer Eide

edited by Espen Sommer Eide

sound by Signe Lidén and Espen Sommer Eide

thank you Sonic Acts, Hilde M. Methi, Maria Rusinovskaya and the Dark Ecology crew

supported by Norsk Kulturråd

Some new dark ecology microphones…

Wind recording sessions at Fjell outside Bergen and Bloemendal outside Amsterdam. Preparing for two large scale performance/installation works early 2017 for the Borealis Festival and Sonic Acts festival. More info to come.

Enter ghost, exit ghost, re-enter ghost

2019-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

With a title found in the stage instructions of ‘Hamlet’ Verdensteatrets new piece is a series of intervals that escapes our chronological sense of time.

There sometimes seems to be a ghost-like presence in all our communication. Something outside language that still shapes our thoughts and experiences. The piece is staging moments that no longer belong to time. When a film passes your eyes at 24 frames per second, what is moving and what is still?
Both animals, humans, machines and minerals are study objects. The analogue knows that we are imperfect – our movements are shaky – we eat with our hands. In the digital universe, all this is numbered and hidden. We need to learn everything a-new. We need to find out what is touching, what is boring, what is funny? What are our instructions?
Repeat after me: Enter ghost, exit ghost, re-enter ghost.

Bio

Verdensteatret consists of video and sound artists, painters and poets, and sculptors and computer programmers who together have developed an intricate audiovisual style. Their poetics is characterized by a dedicated long-term development, creating scenes of sensuous activity and an ongoing experimentation within different media which result in space related orchestral works. Combining aspects of concerts, theatrical performances, and visual art installations, the company builds many of its large scale productions from raw materials collected during journeys combined with stories of the fragile human soul.
Their works have been presented internationally in a number of art contexts and locations, such as art museums, contemporary music festivals, and theaters. Verdensteatret is an Oslo-based art collective founded in 1986 by Lisbeth J. Bodd and Asle Nilsen.

Artists
Asle Nilsen, Espen Sommer Eide, Janne Kruse, Magnus Bugge, Niklas Adam and Torgrim Torve

Thanks to
Ali Djabbary and Martin Taxt

The Waves

2019-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Inspired by the novel The Waves, by Virginia Woolf, Norwegian composer Espen Sommer Eide makes an eponymous spatial music album for Marres. During the exhibtion, the album will ‘live’ inside the house as well as launched on vinyl at the opening on November 15th. The year preceding the opening of The Waves, and during other exhibitions, Espen Sommer Eide recorded nightly performances in the rooms of the house, together with the voice Mari Kvien Brunvoll and Martin Taxt on microtonal tuba. Jochem Vanden Ecker was asked to document the entire process. With these recordings, Sommer Eide composed a series of works that succeed each other in space and can be listened to either separately or joint together.

The tracks take the visitor room by room through the building, following the shadows of the nightly performances, the history of the respective areas explained in detail. They hear songs, melodies, and rhythms, with the voices and perspectives of the performers reproduced simultaneously from multiple angles as if the house were a mirrored palace of sound. The music turns the building into a place where many worlds are possible – completely free from the view or presence of a particular thing or subject.

About the artists

Espen Sommer Eide (1972) is a composer and artist based in Bergen, Norway. Using music and sound as both method and medium, his artistic practice involves long term engagement with specific landscapes, archives, languages and rhythms, with an experimental approach to local and embodied knowledge. In addition to installa tion and performances, he has been a prominent representative of experimental electronic music from Norway, with main projects Alog and Phonophani, and a string of releases on the labels such as Rune Grammofon, FatCat and Hubro.

Martin Taxt (1981), born in Trondheim, Norway, finished his studies at the Academy of Music in Oslo and CNSMDP in Paris in 2006. Since then he has established himself in the international experimental music scene. He is releasing albums and touring with groups such as Koboku Senjû and Microtub. Since 2013 he has been a part of the awardwinning art collective Verdensteatret.

Mari Kvien Brunvoll (1984), is one of Norway’s leading improvisers in song and various eclectic instruments. A graduate of Grieg Academy in Bergen, Brunvoll has performed solo and in groups at some of Europe’s best jazz clubs and festivals and released twisted albums on labels like Jazzland Recordings and Hubro. Mari Kvien Brunvoll is also part of the trio Building Instrument.

Jochem Vanden Ecker (1976) studied photography at the Media and Design Academy, Genk and has lived in Antwerp for the last few years. Vanden Ecker’s work is processoriented, with a hybrid documentary method often in dialogue with other artists, architectures, and situations. Vanden Ecker has released a string of artists books such as “A skydog’s time.
A skydog’s place” (2015) and “From Brown to Blue” (2013).

The Waves is made possible with the support of Fonds 21, the BankGiro Loterij Fonds, the Mondriaan Fund, Arts Council Norway, Norwegian Society of Composers, Bergen Municipality, Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, SOFA Music.

Reviews:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r0hy78zpl27xehk/volkskrant.pdf?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pnukcs7zxx8mlyv/mistermotley_compressed.pdf?dl=0

Imaginalia Revisited

2019-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

The eye is an animal
The body is an ear
The ear is a hand

A composer, disillusioned by the limits and weakness of the human imagination, decides to travel back to the nature where he grew up. He journeys to the rivers and tundras of Northern Norway, hoping to get in touch with other sources of music. The sensory biology of salmon and mosquitoes becomes rhythms and harmonies based on unknown principles. All the while the composer is constantly visited by ghosts of his own past, something that makes it ever more difficult to finish the composition ‘Imaginalia’.

«Imaginalia revisited» is a poetic and musical work with multiple thematic threads. At the core lies our relationship to nature, and various connections and differences between our way of seeing and listening, compared to other living beings. The work also generates new connections and liminal experiences between image and sound, between the visible and the invisible, and investigates through this how history and memory shapes our sensory experience of a place.

Solo exhibition at ØKS, Østfold Kunstsenter, 10. March - 22. April 2018

Acousmonium composition performed at Presences Eléctronique, Ina GRM, Paris 24. March 2018
Solo exhibition (revisited version) at Lydgalleriet, Bergen, August 2019.

Text about project in the book: “Exercises in non-human listening”

SPECTRES
Composer l’écoute / Composing listening

_WITH TEXTS BY / AVEC DES TEXTES DE

Félicia Atkinson, François Bayle, François J. Bonnet, Drew Daniel, Brunhild Ferrari, Beatriz Ferreyra, Stephen O’Malley, Jim O’Rourke, Eliane Radigue, Régis Renouard Larivière, Espen Sommer Eide, Daniel Teruggi, Chris Watson

This book has been conceived as both a prism and a manual. Following the “traditional” arc of electroacoustic composition (listen—record—compose—deploy—feel), each of the contributions collected together here focuses in on a personal aspect, a fragment of that thrilling territory that is sonic and musical experimentation.
Although the term “experimental music” may now have be understood as referring to a genre, or even a particular style, we ought to hold on to the original use of this term, which was based more on an approach than on any particular aesthetic line to be followed. The experimental is first and foremost a spirit, the spirit of the exploration of unknown territories, a spirit of invention which sees musical composition more as a voyage into uncertain territories than as a self-assured approach working safe within the bosom of fully mapped out and recognized lands.
_

«I see the work Imaginalia as a story about the landscape where the artist grew up. A landscape in movement and change throughout the seasons. The same wind, the same seasons, the same sounds, well known but unreachable at the same time.

To return to a landscape after so many years… the senses are the same – but the meaning changes because we ourselves have changed.

A landscape you feel in the bones – but still is but a memory. Watching the film I get a pang of anxiety when I see the intensely yellow birches’ leaf; It is beautiful, but still it tells me of my loneliness and alienness in this world. I have always been curious about other beings’ experience of our common wood.

The yellow birches’ leaf is beautiful… and yet it is a moment of anxiety. The leaf represents something safe and homely we have grown up with – it is at the same time so foreign that it slaps us in the face and our soul freeze up.»

Asle Nilsen, Verdensteatret

The Korsmo Weed Archive

2019-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

The weed archive is a collaboration between artists Espen Sommer Eide and Kristin Tårnesvik initiated in 2012. It is an ongoing project that delves into the archive of the unknown weed biologist/pionéer Emil Korsmo (1863-1953). A weed is a plant in the wrong place, the wrong time and in the wrong culture. The weed archive has developed several performances and exhibitions based on the material found and generated through artistic intervention and performative archiving.

The project ascends from biologist Emil Korsmo’s (1863-1953) profoundly detailed and methodically preserved compilation of own material from a lifelong research into combating weeds. In 2012 the artists found crates filled with well-preserved posters, books, letters, documents, roots, printing plates, seeds and a neatly protected herbarium. The artists got the privilege to work on site in the archive, where they began an exploration of historical materials as well as a systematization of their own artistic process and collaboration, all in the spirit of Emil Korsmo.

The ongoing project Korsmos ugressarkiv with Kristin Tårnesvik & Espen Sommer Eide had its first exhibition at Entree.

Emil Korsmo was a skilled communicator whose knowledge of weeds was spread as never before in Norway and internationally. This was a time, after World War 1, concerned by food shortages and low production. Natural diversity in the fields was a key reason for reduced harvests and Korsmo’s research became central in a battle towards more profitable and efficient agriculture. The byproduct is an assembly of unique material that has been waiting to be rediscovered and activated.

Both artists have previously been devoted to collecting material in similar ways to that of Korsmo, be it endangered languages (Sommer Eide) or historical vintage documents (Tårnesvik). With an experimental and poetic approach Tårnesvik & Sommer Eide are searching for new expressions in their first major collaborative project, resulting so far in four different constellations. Rad # 5, Bergen; Performance Now 4, Bergen; Cabinet, New York and most recently in a radio-play entitled A Trial of Weeds, as part of Performa 13, in collaboration with Hordaland Art Center. The latter is part of the publication Words at a Distance_and was launched at Hordaland Art Center on February 11. _The project Korsmos ugressarkiv/The Korsmo Weed Archive is part of Arts Council Norway’s larger seven-project canopy; What’s With The Archive?

Further collaborations and exhibitions has been done at _Mobile Kultur Byrå, Kirkenes; Gjennom naturen, Stenersenmuseet Oslo, Nikolaj Kunsthal, København og Stavanger Kunstmuseum (2019) and Randers Kunstmuseum (2020)
_

15. May - 13. Okt 2019 at Stavanger Kunstmuseum as part of exhibition “Flora”. Photo: Marie von Krogh/MUST

The weeds are spreading to the continent. The Korsmo weeds archive also visited Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Now available for online listening, the Weed projects radioplay “a Trial of Weeds”. Follow this link

more info:

The Transmitter Show – Words At a Distance is a book and a series of radio plays created for Performa 13, in collaboration with Hordaland Art Centre.

The launch of this project was hosted by Cabinet in New York Friday 15 November 7-9 PM featuring a performance by Espen Sommer Eide and Kristin Tårnesvik titled ‘Weed Archive (LIVE)’, part of an ongoing project that draws on the archive of the pioneering Norwegian weed biologist Emil Korsmo (1863–1953).

Swedish 60 cocktails were served.

This event is presented by Cabinet with generous support from the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York, and Performa.

An exhibition by Kristin Tårnesvik and Espen Sommer Eide.

Entrée January 25th- March 2nd, 2014

Live printing and paper speakers. Photos by Dan Mihaltianu for Performance Art Bergen.

Performed live at Rad#5 - Bergen 6. June 2013

Kristin Tårnesvik, constructor

Espen Sommer Eide, hurdy-gurdy, drum machine and khaen

Mari Kvien Brunvoll, bagpipe and khaen.

Systematismens 1. Borg is made of historical printing plates used in weed biologist Emil Korsmo (1864-2129) textbooks. Systematism pioneer Korsmo created a new economy in agriculture by classifying and measuring the value of useful and useless plants.

http://formativedager.tumblr.com/

An evergrowing sketchbook and logbook and webarchive of items lost and found in the Korsmo Weed Archive at Ås, Norway, can now be visited at http://formativedager.tumblr.com

This is part of the Weed Archive collaboration between Espen Sommer Eide and Kristin Tårnesvik.

Material Vision — Silent Reading

2019-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

_
Bear Island_ (Bjørnøya in Norwegian), was originally named Beeren Eiland by Dutch explorer Willem Barents in 1596, after being attacked by a polar bear on its shore. Later Norwegian geologist Balthazar Keilhau would describe the island as the “Cadaver of the Earth” due to its complete lack of vegetation and harsh weather conditions.

This journey starts in the archives of the National Polar Institute of Norway, located in Tromsø in the northern part of Norway. Sifting through the thousands of scientific photographs I was looking for examples of a particular landscape, or rather a particular way that a landscape affects my eyes. Soon some stood out, photographs from the tiny and fairly insignificant Bear Island, taken during geology and geography expeditions at the beginning of the 20th century.

The photographs I found myself drawn towards, had a certain pre-modernist look, similar to more well know scientific photographs from late 19th century expeditions in North America by Timothy H. O’Sullivan and his peers. For my project I was looking for a landscape devoid of obvious points of attention — landscapes that to a large degree is reduced to optical categories, a space made up of pure lines and deep perspective. These landscapes also inherits a sense of otherness, and a sense of being uninhabitable and desolate — landscapes where only people of great experience and knowledge (e.g. Scientists) can endeavor to venture. The photographs of this pioneering era were partly given the disorienting look precisely for this reason. In order to obtain funding for further expeditions, the scientists deliberately exhibited nature as a foreign, incomprehensible and difficult place, ready to be conquered by science.

In exploring a unfamiliar landscape, one cannot avoid a certain process of appropriation, whether one is exploring for the purpose of politics, resources, science or art. It seems like the explorer’s gaze cannot help but desire to possess and master the object in view. And this in turn bleeds into the aesthetics of how it is represented.

Back to the archive photos, this time using an eye-tracker to draw a line following the movement of my eyes. In this case I registered the first impressions, about 2 seconds per image. The lines drawn on these images are done by the eye-tracking setup. For the work on archive material I sat down in front of a screen showing the pictures one by one and the tracker read the minute movements of my eyes. This is a good way to observe how the eyes quickly orient themselves and make sense of a landscape.

The next step was to go there in person, to Bear Island, and do my readings in the field. Questions I was pondering: How would being there affect the mental disposition, and the function of the senses? How does staying for a prolonged time in a landscape, tuning into it, change the way we view it? Needless to say it is not the easiest place to reach. A permanent meteorological station is the only inhabited place, with about 6 people on duty for half-year deployments. I joined a Nordic expedition of science historians, with a plan to walk in the footsteps of some early pioneers of polar science. We arrived mid-July, dropped off by a patrolling coastal guard ship. The next two weeks we spent crisscrossing the island on foot, sleeping in old hunters cabins that are being kept up by the friendly staff of the meteorological station. At each place I installed my instrument and did a series of experiments.

Bear Island – between Norway, Svalbard, Russia, Greenland and Iceland.

The eyes have two basic motions, saccades and fixations, the saccades are rapid shifts from one area to another, and the resting in one spot is a fixation. In reading a text for instance the eyes have about 5 fixations per line (or one per 7–9 characters). This is because only the center of the field of vision gives detail enough for reading text. The tuning instrument I constructed has hammers that hit the tuning forks in various patterns. They are triggered by the fixations of my eyes, and the position of my gaze in the landscape chooses which forks are hit, and pitches played. This becomes a very peculiar experience for the subject using the equipment, as the audio from the instrument is somehow connected to the object you are viewing, so that glancing around gives a certain sound to each thing you are looking at. You are hearing the eyes, but also hearing the objects and the landscape. The instruments become a learning tool where the landscape itself teaches the method of how it should be seen.

Naturally your disposition affects the movement. Being a musician and composer I instantly start composing music by rhythmically moving my gaze from place to place, back and forth, creating patterns. So I find myself somehow in between complete awareness of my eyes’ movement, and on the other side aiming for a free gaze — letting the instincts control the movement automatically while looking. The different states of consciousness and intentionality merge and become inseparable. A free gaze upon these landscapes so invested in politics, art and science at times seems impossible.

The ground on Bear Island is mostly mud that melts during summer and becomes a prehistoric soup, the other half is a rocky terrain that become like a labyrinth if you lose your way. The highest mountain, Mount Misery, has vast amounts of fossils pouring down its pyramid like sides, from a time when the island was still at the bottom of the sea. The lakes on Bear Island are extremely toxic from precipitation that collect all environmental toxins from Europe and drop them over this island because of the weather systems. All around there are dead birds scattered after a diet of fish from these lakes. Luckily (or unluckily depending on your point of view) there are rarely polar bears there nowadays because the seas north of the island doesn’t freeze over in winter as it used to. Still you should always bring a gun.

I found out a bit too late in the planning that it is also called the island of fog. During summer there is thick fog around 20 days of the month. I was starting to think, maybe not the best place for an eye-tracking project.

In 1883, M. Lamare was the first to use a mechanical eye-tracker, by placing a blunt needle on the participant’s upper eyelid. The needle picked up the sound produced by each saccade and transmitted it as a faint clicking to the experimenter’s ear through an amplifying membrane and a rubber tube. The rationale behind this device was that saccades are easier to perceive and register aurally than visually. The first system that didn´t have to be physically fastened to the eye, was built by Guy Thomas Buswell in Chicago in the 1920s, using lightbeams reflected off the eye. Today computerized systems are used to help disabilities, measure reading and the effectivity of commercials. Needless to say, it is not usual to bring this equipment out in the field. It is normally done in a highly controlled laboratory context. A lot of preparation was needed to make sure everything would work under various outdoor conditions. When it was not possible to bring the whole instrument rig, I would just record my eye movements with a smaller mobile camera with an app that also could play sounds to give the audible feedback.

Reading as activity is so widespread and taken for granted in gaining knowledge today, that it might be difficult to see that it too has changed over time, that there is a history of reading. Up to the medieval ages reading was tied to the voice, by the fact that all texts should be read aloud — recited, even in solitude (or so-called reading rooms that any roman villa worth anything should have). The texts also showed this fact, but not having any spaces between words and no additional signs, because they were only meant for oral reading. The development of other diacritic and punctuation marks came later, parallel to the development of the earliest scores for music. The transition to silent reading (famously described by Augustin as the munk Ambroses invention), also resulted in the invention of new reading techniques. The gaze started moving in new saccades, the speed of reading increased and reading directly without preparing became possible. The text became released from the author and the presence of the voice, and became a format with its own inherent creativity.

[In order to] be able to see sublimity in the ocean, regarding it, as the poets do, according to what the impression upon the eye reveals [ger. augenschein], as, let us say, in its calm a clear mirror of water bounded only by the heavens, or, be it disturbed, as threatening to overwhelm and engulf everything.

Kant, Ciritique of Judgement, ak. 270

In philosophical aesthetics Kants concept of the sublime is central, and it is especially connected to experience of different landscapes of nature, typically when something becomes very “big” or overwhelms us with its “power”. But Kant is not a romantic, and the quote above is one of the most cryptic in his aesthetic work. What is seeing “as the poets do”? What does augenschein mean (“the impression upon the eye”)? The sublime ends up being a pure formal reduction to geometric and optical categories, and this in sharp contrast to what Kant himself aimed for by introducing the aesthetic experience (for more moral or political aims). The formalism becomes so extreme that the shapes no longer harmonize with each other, and loose any connection to concepts or goals.

This “impression upon the eye” becomes in the theory of philosopher Paul de Man the starting point for re-interpretation of the sublime as such an amputating and fragmentizing experience. A kind of experience he calls “material vision”.

The artwork that resulted from this expedition, was commissioned by the University of Tromsø, and their new faculty of technology building. In addition to the video shown here, I also made 6 photogravure prints based on various image material and eyetracking registrations. The first two was based on the archive material from the polar institute. The next 3 my own medium format photographs from the island with eye-tracking.

and finally one highlighting reading of an 30 page article with eyetracking.

The photogravure process transfers the images to etched copper plates and is printed as intaglio print. The eye-tracking on separate plates are then imprinted onto the image. This complex and rare printing process brings out the physical aspect of the landscape hitting the eye and the eye scratching its mark into the view.

Bear Island might be a cadaver, but it is actually a corpse teeming with life. This island belongs to the birds. They flock to different areas of the island, but especially its southern cliffs. Bear Island has the largest colony of seabirds in the Northern hemisphere. At least a million pairs find their home there during the mating season. And the rest of the island is also full of them. When I wanted to do long more meditative eye-trackings to see what happened to my perception over time I was constantly being attacked by birds swooping down to chase me away.

Time moves to a standstill in the freezing climate. There are very few bacteria and fungus to break down organic material. So what you leave behind is stored in the time capsule that is the Arctic. We could eat food that should be long rotten, and we could find garbage from previous expeditions years ago still lying around.

There really should be no man on this island.

Verdensteatret

2019-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

VERDENSTEATRET is an artist collective based in Oslo. The group’s continuous artistry has been established over the last 30 years. The group was founded in Bergen in 1986 by Lisbeth J. Bodd and Asle Nilsen, with background from respectively theatre and visual art. I have been a part of the company since 2008.

Now touring is “Flat Sun”, a short trailer here:

“Trust me tomorrow” (see full information here):

Today the group consists of artists representing many different artistic genres and professions. They endeavour to use a collaborative process to deeply integrate different artistic disciplines into projects that bridge the gap between artistic boarders.

Verdensteatret’s poetics are characterized by an ongoing experimentation within different medias by building complex links between seemingly incompatible technologies and materials. An experimental use of audiovisual technology in close dialogue with more traditional tools of artistic expression results in large scale orchestral works and space-related musical compositions.

They have developed a complex audio-visual expression, where emerging landscapes of sound integrated with sculptured scenography and bits of fragile, human tale.

Seeing the sound, listening to the images.

They say that their activity now has become a ”telling orchestra” that performs compositions in the “movable room genre”. Established notions of form or style about performance are more or less useless for these peculiarly captivating works.

Their works are presented widely international in different art contexts and locations, such as art museums, contemporary music festivals and theatres.

Verdensteatret is supported by Arts Council Norway and other official art-foundations in Norway.

And All the Questionmarks Started to Sing from Verdensteatret on Vimeo.

35 min documentation of Verdensteatret’s live performance “And All the Questionmarks Started to Sing”

PRIZES

VERDENSTEATRET has received several prizes during the years:

Kritikerprisen 2015 (Broen over Gjørme / Bridge Over Mud)

Heddaprisen for best audio-visual design 2015 (_Broen over Gjørme / Bridge Over Mud)
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**Heddas Honorary Award 2014
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The Bessie Award - New York Dance and Performance Award 2005

**Telenors Culture Prize 2003
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**The Stage Art Prize - The Norwegian Theatre Association 1998

Dead Language Poetry

2019-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

First installment of the project was asolo exhibition held at Bergen Kunsthall, March 2013.

Included several separate and combination of works and three performances held in the exhibition space:

“Dead Language Poetry” (record player, vinyl records, voicemachine, video)

“Spirit Catcher” (phonograph-box, tripod, bellows, motor, electronics)

“the Ligetizer” (instrument with 6 metronomes)

“Structural metaphors of western thought recited in the Vedic style” (6 silkscreen with handwriting)

“Philosophical Instruments” (aluminiums-rods on stands)

“Le grain de la voix” (5 miniature loudspeakers with vocal-resonators, sound composition)

“88 BPM at 1000 frames/s” (video)

“396 Hz at 2000 frames/s” (video)

“Language meaning music I” (video)

Every ten days another language disappears—at the present rate about half of the world’s 6000 languages will disappear in the course of a few generations. What is lost when a language dies is a many-faceted issue which can be viewed in several perspectives, for example cultural history, linguistics and the philosophy of language. With a background in art, music and philosophy, Espen Sommer Eide has taken various approaches to the phenomenon.
His main interest is in the complexity of the processes behind the destruction, evolution and creation of languages.

The archiving of languages can function as both a destructive and a creative process. One of the works in the exhibition revolves around how linguistic structures are stored in a collective consciousness, and how in certain cases the voice can neutralize the destructive power of time and memory. The sacred Vedic texts of India have been passed down through generations (since 1800 BC). Despite exclusively oral transmission their content has been preserved word for word thanks to the special way in which they are recited, in complex paralinguistic patterns.

In the exhibition the theme is also dealt with from a purely aesthetic point of view. For example is there a unique aural imprint embedded in all languages, and can such an aesthetic aspect be separated from the knowledge-bearing and identity-forming aspects? What is the sound of a dead language and can it be revived? When Edison invented the first recording apparatus for sound, the phonograph, it was quickly seen as a medium not primarily for reproducing music, but for listening to recordings of voices from people who had passed on. The voices from the phonograph were experienced as voices without bodies, as spirits in space. Through deconstructions of language and the voice Sommer Eide deals with issues such as the boundaries between living and dead languages, between meaning and sound, and between linguistic-metaphorical structures and the musical organization of sound. In addition to the exhibition, the project consists of a series of performances with a point of departure in self-made instruments (“Philosophical Instruments”).

All photos by Thor Brødreskift

Voice artist Trine Hylander Friis interpretation of a composition by Espen Sommer Eide.
The melodic structure is based on the indian Vedic recital tradition. The list of metaphors used as a “libretto” in the piece, is a system of conceptual metaphors based on Lakoff and Johnsons book “Metaphors we live by” (1980). Some would even go as far as to say they are a universal system of the way we think.

Spirit Catcher (phonograph-box, tripod, bellows, motor, electronics)
by Espen Sommer Eide, reader Anne Marthe Dyvi
Exhibited and performed as part of the solo exhibition ‘Dead Language Poetry’ at Bergen Kunsthall 2013

My work ‘Dead Language Poetry’ will be exhibited as part of the group exhibition ‘Dread - fear in the age of technological acceleration’ curated by Juha van ‘t Zelfde and will exhibit at De Hallen Haarlem 6.9-24.11 2013. I will perform the companion musical performance live at the opening 6. September.

The work aims to re-animate the voices of dead languages through a specially built apparatus than channels recorded voices from a vinyl record into my larynx.

Photo by Hans de Bruyn

This was also developed into a performance for the radio festival Radiophrenia in Glasgow 2017.

BEK has released this ebook I wrote for apple iBooks.

Download here

This text is based on a lecture for the Platform series at Bergen Kunsthall 10. February 2013. Doing research for my exhibition “Dead Language Poetry”, first installed at Bergen Kunsthall /No. 5 in 2013, I sifted through a vast range of subjects regarding language, some of which made it into the works of the exhibition – others fell into the background web of inspiration. Included is also sounds from the playlist intervention and the video of the performance of the work: Structural metaphors recited in the vedic style.