A work-in-progress, this is an installation built from a Radiola M40 radio from 1927.
I like to sit my practice somewhere in between nostalgia and talismanic fetish. The work recalls the past but, in its sculptural alteration, at the same time suggests the past as a dream-state that can never be returned to, a notion that can only be re-created in the moment by the observer. We are confronted with the object's properties, function, physical characteristics and embodied power, and how this affects our sensibilities of the present. A radio is a way to conjure into noise the silent waves passing through our bodies.
The goal of the project is to get the radio working and transmit to it audio material developed by myself and singer/historian Clara Gustavsson, as well as to elaborate the installation with more multi-media material. You can hear an early sound idea below created for a one-day installation at Textival, Gothenburg, in March 2012.
Here I will notify about some of the recent things I have recorded.
I will upload newly recorded tracks to Soundcloud as much as I am able.
BCR
A new project with myself, Clara Gustavsson, and Richard Widerberg. We are working with ideas about radically altering historical songs. We'll be working more in the future, this was our first concert. Also available on Soundcloud.
Uppdrag Konst with Mårten Falk
Recorded in 2011 during a two-day workshop studio session. Initiated by the Michael Idehall of the GEIGER organisation in Gothenburg, myself and guitarist Mårten Falk, never having previously met, were put together at Element studios under the direction of composer Lars Carlsson. We recorded a set in studio and also a live set. These are two of the six tracks recorded. Recorded and mixed by Linus Andersson.
Do Not Wear Out
Live performance from Dec. 12, 2010 at Hey! It's Enrico Pallazzo in Göteborg, Sweden.
This was a live action performance, which beyond the live sound element also involved a lot of movement within the space of the installation "A Resonant Tomb." I will have a video for this soundtrack soon!
On the floor of the installation I inscribed a labyrinth. The circumference of the labyrinth is surrounded by eleven radios.
I am tied with a rope to the floor at the center of the labyrinth, thus being restricted to move only within that space. In my hands I am holding a radio or a radio with an analog filter. Slowly walking the maze, I strafe past the radios in the circle. Since they are turned on, they interact with the radio I am holding.
A few times you will hear an uncontrolled oscillation (such as at the very end), which was a feature of the installation that somehow also manifested in the radio I performed with! This interference sound is a result of many radios in the same space being tuned to the same frequency.
The performance program involves a small introduction, spending the first half with the filter off while entering the labyrinth, and turning the filter on for the second half while escaping the labyrinth.
The title relates to the impossible promise of perfect sound fidelity, and the strenuous demands of the performance itself. It comes directly from an early ad for wax cylinders made by the Indestructible Record Company.
Thanks to Mappe Persson for recording!
Sine Wave Oscillator
Video by Niklas Rydén. Thanks to Louise Waite for arranging the show.
Last September I started experimenting with a sine wave oscillator to see what kind of things I could do with it. These are big machines that used to populate scientific laboratories and provided clean sine waves to use as reference on oscilloscopes and the like.
In December I received a better-functioning unit from a good friend and decided to make a performance using it with a live looping platform - essentially making a very primitive synthesizer.
I performed this on Dec. 5th 2010 at Atalante in Göteborg. It meanders a bit, since I am still new with this technique, which is quite difficult to master as one must create harmonies only by ear and a frequency dial.
The space played in is rather massive, with a high ceiling, so I attempted to use as much low frequency as possible, thus it would help to listen to this on some quality loudspeakers.
Hunger
While at the Shift festival in Basel I played a headphone concert. It was a wonderful way to perform. And I had such good artists to perform alongside, as well (thanks to Pei-wen Liu and the people at the festival for making it possible).
Unfortunately I was not able to record the concert, though I was happy with it.
Thankfully, the day I returned to Gothenburg my friend Richard was holding a Placard headphone concert (leplacard.org) which I participated in with 14 others!
My set at that headphone concert was more forceful and noisy, and I dare say a much more successful performance than in Basel. Here it is.
The title of the track is inspired by a friend who said the sounds exacerbated his hunger pangs.
Of course there are many different kinds of hunger.
The way I have performed these sets is a more refined result of the Radio Drift work-in-progress found below.
Your Absent Hands
The song was made entirely with one vintage tube radio receiving shortwave, then the recordings were multitracked. The prominent pulsing drone is the result of my hand's presence near or away from the radio. This of course lends the title part of its meaning, but the title is also meant to evoke a more substantial and serious longing for presence, which is difficult to describe.
Me and Petter Wästberg
Petter Wästberg and I have been working on an improvised duo performance. We first performed October 2009 and with a more elaborate and interesting set up at the end of March 2010.
Here is a video from our first performance. The instruments used were no-input mixer, contact microphones, and I was simply playing the radio and having to move around a lot to do that.
Unfortunately we've been unable to source the recording of the March concert, though presumably one exists somewhere at the music school we performed at.
Petter is great to work with and I hope we can work more in the future.
Your Gleaming Eyes
In the following video rather than using a radio I am sampling from the old 78rpm record and making noises with an old analog keyboard. More info on the Vimeo page.
This was from late August 2009, during a concert for the summer course I was participating in at Valand.
I have not since performed live with the turntable setup, though I will be incorporating something similar into a future installation.
"A Resonant Tomb" is a sound installation about distance, either through space, time, medium, or death. How does the shape of our longings persist over time? How does it change—would we be able to recognize it?
Through the use of two opposing radio stations on the same frequency, "A Resonant Tomb" provides us room to contemplate the difficulty of communication and separating signal from noise. Moving through this space, we are aware of our own body's affect on our surroundings and of the information passing through us. The old, not yet dead, media plays with our memories, crackling with the nostalgic resonating echoes of that which was, that which could be, and that which has been only a comfortable dream.
This installation was produced especially for the cavernous post-industrial space at Hey! It's Enrico Pallazzo.
Produced with the support of Skup Palet. Thanks to Anna Ganslandt and Jan Pilgaard for the space, their support, and set-up advice.
The title for the exhibition comes from Jonathan Sterne's 2003 book The Audible Past.
Physical Description
This installation consisted of a ring of radios, a floor drawing, a sine wave oscillator, and two "living rooms."
In the centre of the space I installed 11 radios in a circle. Within the circle I drew a labyrinth, using chalk.
All of the radios, in this instance, were turned on to receive a broadcast at 1000kHz (AM radio). I built two different simple "radio stations," both transmitting at 1000kHz but each transmitting different musical programs. The power of these stations is so low that I can decide which radios will play which program by placing the antennas in the right location.
Thus, half of the radios play one program, the rest play another. The musical program consisted of old folk, jazz, and popular music recorded from 78rpm records. At the end of each song, I have manually spun the record in the lock groove for several minutes. This not only prolongs the song at its end, but also damages the stylus. Each song recorded sounds worse than the last. This grinding halt has a lasting effect.
This poor fidelity is of course compounded by the poor radio transmitter and vintage receivers. Every sound bears this patina and sounds truly "vintage" due to the historicity of the components, and certainly the sound would not be possible without having built the entire system. Transmitter interference abounds, and the radios themselves interfere with each other, occasionally bursting into loud cacaphonic oscillations.
Due to the prolonged lock grooves, the gap between songs is quite long, so often the spectator is not expecting a song to appear out of the noise. This can cause a surprise, meant to catch the listener off guard, to better let the music serve its historical sensation.
You are allowed to walk the labyrinth, surrounded by the sound and thrum, slowed down in solitary contemplation. The cultural meaning of the labyrinth is loaded and in this context is not easily parsed.
To either side of the central installation are two entire "living rooms," assembled from vintage furniture. The lights are off, the seats are empty, as if they are waiting, or perhaps they have been vacated. The radio you may expect to find in the living room has moved on to an unusual place.
In addition, hiding in the back corner of the room is a large subwoofer connected to a sine wave oscillator. This device provides a 19Hz background tone. This tone is not audible to humans but is felt in the body as an uneasy, sickening sensation, as if the room were haunted.
This was a live action performance, which beyond the live sound element also involved a lot of movement within the installation.
I am tied with a rope to the floor at the center of the labyrinth, thus being restricted to move only within that space. In my hands I am holding a radio or a radio with an analog filter. Slowly walking the maze, I strafe past the radios in the circle. Since they are turned on, they interact with the radio I am holding.
The performance program involves a small introduction, spending the first half with the filter off while entering the labyrinth, and turning the filter on for the second half while escaping the labyrinth.
The title relates to the impossible promise of perfect sound fidelity, and the strenuous demands of the performance itself. It comes directly from an early ad for wax cylinders made by the Indestructible Record Company.
Thanks to Mappe Persson for recording!
"You Are Dissolved" is a noise music project. It grew out of my thesis research of radios and David Bohm's implicate order. This performance was my first performance under this name.
Poster
If "The Small within the Great" is austere and monolithic, then "You Are Dissolved" is the romantic, brutal, rock-and-roll counterpart. The fact I made myself wear the radio like a guitar should suggest that I'm trying to talk about my relationship to music. I sample a great deal of others' music quite overtly (see Vimeo pages for artists used) and even made a "cover" song.
I have seen many artists use radios, indeed it's a reference to some of John Cage's work. I have not, however, seen a performance use one at ear-splitting volume. An important aspect of what I am doing is physical confrontation, my own response to the sounds I am making.
In these original performances I arranged a system of radio transmission and reception with which I interfere using my body in space.
I intend to implicate myself within a system of noise, otherwise to be enfolded into an order - to be dissolved.
Through the barely existent control I have over this system, I introduce ideas related to longing, desire, loss, and the inability to express.
There is an aspect of dance in this project, as the radios respond to my body's movement.
These videos are from one of the first performances. I have since been using additional "instruments," and have been exaggerating the "dance" as well
A crucial part of You Are Dissolved is that the sampled music is
a) meaningful to me
b) a loop of music that sounds as if it is either "collecting" or "dissolving" and
c) being transmitted through my body.
You can check out the three best tracks here:
The rest are available as videos below. Tomoyuki Yago and Giorgios Chloros were so kind as to film this. I was so happy with their results!
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