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.

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.

French publication Art Nord has commissioned a new work for travelling exhibition Horizonic accompanied by a special edition on the artists in the show, the focus of the show is sound art.

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.

A little something from the field…

This work is supported by KÍM and Gentle Giants whale watching in Húsavík and done with the gracious assistance of Marianne Rasmussen at the University of Iceland research post in Húsavík.

Here´s a link to our presentation and here to an overview of the whole program (including documentation of many interesting contributions).

I discussed some of the interesting phenomena I have stumbled upon in my little forays into acoustics and the physics of sound, including research I have been doing with composer Þráinn Hjálmarsson on refining his Thranophone.

In particular I discussed the idea of using an acoustic formant (see here and here) to obtain the behaviour Þráinn is interested in accentuating in the Thranophones.

Sam Auinger invited the participants of the marathon to the Wasserturm in berlin (which he manages as a venue for sound installations together with Carsten Nicolai)  to give us an example of a space with VERY distinct aural characteristics.

We concluded our demonstration with Christian giving the participants a chance to physically feel strong sympathetic frequency response in a steel rod (watch the documentation linked to above if you want to know what that means).

This is funny but doesn´t really translate for non icelanders

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!