This project is in an interesting phase and consuming much of my effort at the moment. It´s imprudent to reveal too much of the content but this hour long (or slightly less) opera stage production will examine an icelandic historical figure and his access to, and inhabiting of, often contradictory, narrative roles available to people of privilege in his time.

The collaboration has been expanded to include Canadians Angela Rawlings, poet and Davyde Wachell, filmmaker which is adding depth and layers to the work.

I spent december 2011 working with Davíð Brynjar in Schloss Solitude developing the visual style and tools to achieve it. Here is a rough prototype of an automated film rig we used during testing:

I´m finalizing the design of the rig during spring 2012 and we will apply the finished product in a short stint at the Watermill Center residency in New York, May 2012 where we aim to produce and dress-rehearse  one intact scene (or module) from the larger work.

Redesign:

The finished opera will premiere in 2013 or 2014 the latest.

The work I am producing is an amalgamation of several ideas I have carried in my belly for a long while. In brief I will travel to the north of iceland with a Halldorophone and attempt a conversation with a humpback whale this coming March, 2012.

I will not reveal too much before the expedition is completed. But I will mention an interesting discovery by whale researcher Marianne Rasmussen who,due to some new tools in her toolbox, discoverd that the “teenage” humpback males who do not attempt the long swim south for mating are in fact singing up here in the north. The purpose of the Humpback song remains a mystery and subject to much conjecture but it is a social tool and the animals react to each other´s songs.

I want to see if I can get a “musical connection” with one or more of the animals. I will use the Halldorophone (which sounds a little like a whale) to do it.

According to american composer and author David Rothenberg a call and response from any of the great whales has never been documented, even if the smaller species are chatty enough… My theory is that there is a window of opportunity while they are still young and impressionable and left without parental supervision.

Christian is developing the pre-amplifying circuit for the pickups, below is a recent test version of what the pickups migh look like. I have a 3D extrusion printer now which makes prototyping a lot easier and more interesting.

Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson programmer/scientist started the season with a Processing workshop titled “Creative programming”. Participants, many of whom had never programmed before, created their own little graphic programs from absolute scratch.

Here´s mine:

More interesting stuff to come!

This is a collaboration between myself and Tómas Ponzi, with an advisory council of some members of Hakkavélin (Hacker´s space in Iceland) and LornaLAB.

The idea is to build a medium sized (~ 1000mm x 500mm working bed) CNC router, with parts for less then 1000 usd. With as few “specialized” parts and as many easily sourced “standardized” parts and as little specialized machining as possible.

Here’s a simple 3D sketch of the machine:

There are many well documented DIY versions of these machines online, however as we started to look for a prospective candidate to model our version on (top of the list was the diylilcnc ) we came across a few recurring problems: Sourcing specialized parts makes it hard to use the same design from one place to another, documentation often takes you 90% of the way but excludes the specific little tweaks towards the end that finally get the project running (probably a bit of burn out syndrome…) and the mother of all: “The American system of measurement”!

So, this machine is geared to standard metric parts and stuff which can easily be gotten off line, we hope to curb material costs by laser cutting and routing rather inexpensive materials at the Akranes FabLab. Access to these machining techniques is becoming more videly accessible across Europe as the FabLabs keep popping up.

A CNC router an infinately useful tool which is just a bit out of the pricerange for most artists, makers and hobbyists. One of our design goals is to make an open source design which is inexpensive and functional enough that people will want to replicate and improve upon it.

Documentation will begin when we have the first working model.

Among the other artworks I particularily like is the walking container.

http://skjaldborg.com/

Which was great, if a little scary since the video wasn’t ready (nor is likely to ever be). The festival, however, is fantastic and premiered a few very good projects, most notably this:

Ge9n

A documentary which listens intently to what the Reykjavík 9 have to say about life and the latent fascist tendencies in icelandic society and culture. And I very much recommend!

Hér er krækja á vef Grímuverðlaunanna.

Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score to Icelandic National Theater’s production of King Leer this past winter has been nominated in the catagory best score. The music was performed on halldorophone number 5.

Photo by Paul Segers who has one of his interesting scifi-ish narratives in the show.

Atlantis participates in the “Art on Lake” festival in Budapest opening in may 2011 organized by the Budapest museum of Fine Arts.

The little artificial lake in which Atlantis now floats had a shanty town in it’s dry bed before the lake was re-flooded for the show. From what I could gather the debris of the houses was bulldosed and scrapped and the inhabitants forcibly deported from downtown in line with the new right swinging government’s policies (exorbitant fines for vagrancy will probably keep them from returning). Fortunately there still seems to be one family living in the woods on the far bank next to the castle.

Meanwhile, here’s some food for thought.

Briefly about the IRC from the website of the International Music Council:

“The International Rostrum of Composers (IRC) is organized by the International Music Council with the financial assistance of participating radio networks. It is an international forum of representatives of broadcasting organizations who come together for the purpose of exchanging and broadcasting contemporary art music.”

IRC webpage