Work Residency: Etchings of coastal sites
Published
Etchings of coastal sites is an interdisciplinary collaboration between Andrea Urstad ToftCraig T. Wells, Omar E. Johnsen, and Stian Remvik. The project will excavate certain rural sites of western Norway, and through the processes of montage, collage and cinematic time lapsing where the artists will focus on the notion of accelerating time image and disjointed scene transitions.
Together, the group will visit several western coastal sites in Norway, where they will collect acoustic and visual material in which to work with as raw material. From this a visual score, in which to prompt real time compositional form and acoustic emergence, will be created; in which sounds will proliferate from the rural material. This interaction between soundscape, landscape and the digital spheres of new media is an exploration of alternative strategies in creating musical form; where found sounds and synthesised sounds are fused together resulting in a phantasmagoria of the real and imaginary landscapes in which illusions and dream like sequences are projected.
Inspired by Freud’s ideas about ‘the uncanny’, a central question in the project is where the boundaries between the self and the environment goes. The artists aim to answer this with uncertainty and dissolution, which ultimately results in a faint and ghostly etching that isn’t always easy to decipher or locate. The installation/performance will consist of multiple screens and speakers in which they will work with the themes of inhabitance, immersion, dwelling and enveloping the body of the spectator.
The audio visual installation/performance will premiere at Kunsthuset Wrap in the mid of June.
About the artists
Andrea Urstad Toft is a visual artist from Bergen, educated in illustration from Southampton Solent University. Today she works with analog photography techniques and video art. As a visual artist, she creates video works using a mixture of analogue and digital techniques, created through an exploratory process tailored to music and surroundings. Through her artistic work she aims to create an interpretation of what occurs in the intersection between the analogue and digital world.
Craig T. Wells is a philosopher and improviser based in Bergen who is a member of the Norwegian Artistic Research team. He works with multi channel composition, synthesis and improvisation that teeters at the fringes of the idiomatic. His interests reside in field recording, noise and beat science beyond the dance-floor with particular emphasis placed on real time improvisation using primarily a hardware ecology. He has released albums under various monikors such as Klunks, Refrains, Medikal and currently uses the pseudonym Vonrik Haug where he explores sound diffusion and elevation and azimuth as compositional syntax.
Omar E. Johnsen is a musician who has put the electric guitar to the side in order to explore new territories within music and sound, now first and foremost with the modular synthesizer, lately more frequently collaborating with visual artists and other creative people. He is to some known as a member of the indie electronic band named Casiokids flipping between different instruments, but has the last few years changed focus to modular synthesis, improvised music and sound installations. Following this pathway he has recently started performing with a box fresh solo project exploring his roots with a name that somehow reveals his ancestry – Neo Borneo.
Stian Remvik is an app, website, data animation and games designer and developer. He graduated with a BA in Visual Communication from the Bergen Academy of Arts and Design and has built his knowledge and experience of programming and implementing technical solutions in artistic projects through his various freelance involvements. Amongst other, Stian has designed and developed the composition app BITWaves for BIT20 Ensemble, the prototype for the game Sonarc in collaboration with Espen Sommer Eide, and the recent extension of BEK’s website BEK Archive.