Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts

Escatology, a major new soundwork for Borealis, explores endings – the end of land where we take to ships, the end of radio contact where white noise fills the receiver; the end of individual sounds as they echo and decay in diverse Bergen locations, from the Hurtigrute boat horn bouncing off the mountains, to the ten second echo in a cave under the mountain.

The text – in Norwegian and English – was written and performed live by Peter Blegvad – also explores historical doctrines of The End.

New home-made electronic instruments and vintage tape machines developed sonorities derived from field recordings. The performance was accompanied by Jeremy Welsh’s meditative high definition video of shipping off the East coast of England in the North Sea. This was a contemplative work that encourages us to consider how it would feel to witness the end of the world.

The Borealis 2013 Notations Project was inspired by Theresa Sauer’s 2008 Notations 21 book – a wonderful collection of seminal classic and newly created graphic scores. Inspired by John Cage’s 1969 Notations publication, Notations 21 explores extended musical notation, ranging from new approaches to conventional stave notation, to scores that make use of text instructions, colour, photography, collage and other means of visual expression.

With this in mind, Borealis has initiated its 2013 Notations project, bringing together people from diverse disciplines to collaborate on creating and performing new musical scores, which will be performed and exhibited throughout the festival. For this event Andrea Spreafico developed a notation score, Catholic complex system for the end of the XX century, performed by the Langham Research Center.

“More info”: http://www.borealisfestival.no/events/borealis-festivalprogram/borealis-utmark/?lang=en