Jacob Kirkegaard is a Danish artist with an interest in the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time and hearing. His performances, audio/visual installations and compositions deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain inaccessible to sense perception. With the help of unorthodox recording tools such as accelerometers, hydrophones or home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard manages to capture and explore "secret sounds" - distortions, interferences, vibrations, ambiences - from within a variety of environments: volcanic earth, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, crystals, ice... and the human inner ear itself.
A graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, Kirkegaard has given workshops and lectures in academic institutions such as the Royal Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen and the Art Institute of Chicago. During the last ten years, he has been presenting exhibitions and touring festivals and conferences throughout the world. He has released five albums (mostly on the British label "Touch"). Among his numerous collaborators are JG Thirlwell, CM von Hausswolff, Lydia Lunch and Philip Jeck.
Official website - www.fonik.dk
S E L E C T E D W O R K S
L A B Y R I N T H I T I S
LABYRINTHITIS is a three-part sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist’s ears. In an interactive performance, the audience’s auditory organs respond – audibly – to the composition. Paradoxical as it may sound - we can listen to our own ears.
The work relies on a principle employed both in contemporary medical science and in musical practice: When two frequencies at a certain ratio are played into the ear, vibrations of the hair cells in the cochlea will produce a third frequency – a so-called “distortion product otoacoustic emission” (DPOAE), also referred to in musicology as the “Tartini tone”.
With a tiny microphone, a number of DPOAEs was recorded from Jacob Kirkegaard's ears. By playing them in a concert, Kirkegaard evokes further distortion effects in the ears of his listeners. Each new “Tartini tone” is first heard in the audience’s heads only. Then Kirkegaard takes it up and combines it with another “distorting” frequency, thus creating a descending tonal structure that mirrors the resonant spectra of the human cochlea itself.
A R K
In the summer of 2006 ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in Ishøj, Denmark had
the pleasure of commissioning Jacob Kirkegaard to create a sound portrait of
the museum. The portrait is now part of our ARKcast project, that combines podcasting
with the use of portable media players as a part of the museum experience.
When I first got the idea of asking Jacob to create a sound portrait, I
thought his work with vibration sensors would be a fantastic way to experience
the unique architecture of ARKEN - as sound. This technique makes
the building, the concrete walls and steel construction come to life, like the
secret sounds of the huge steel pillar that is now part of the portrait.
In addition to working with sensors, Jacob also employed the technique he had
perfected in Tjernobyl with his Aion work. This method does not only let the
material building speak, but makes the spaces themselves sing in long billowing
drones.
That Jacob chose this technique of layering silence to make the resonant frequencies
of the room speak up, takes on a interesting conceptual turn when employed in
the spaces of the museum: The tracks come to speak of the way an art institution
always influences and colors the art it presents. When the art speaks the institution
whispers along; it resonates so to say. Jacob's sound portrait of ARKEN
literally turns the resonance of the museum into the work itself. Feeding back
the institutions whispers, making them into loud singing drones that fill the
spaces as dense as water. Magnus Kaslov, ARKEN.
4 R O O M S
CD - 52 minutes. Touch Tone 26
This work is a sonic presentation of four deserted rooms inside the 'Zone of
Alienation' in Chernobyl, Ukraine, recorded in October 2005.
The sound of each room was evoked by an elaborate method: Kirkegaard made
a recording of 10 minutes and then played the recording back into the room,
recording it again. This process was repeated up to ten times. As the layers
got denser, each room slowly began to unfold a drone with various overtones.
From a technical point of view, Kirkegaard's "sonic time layering" refers
back to Alvin Lucier's work "I am sitting in a room" [1970].
He recorded his voice in a space and repeatedly played this recording back into
that same space. In Kirkegaard's work, however, no voice is being projected
into the rooms: during the recordings he left the four spaces, to wait for whatever
might evolve from the silence.
4 ROOMS was released on the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, 26th
of April 2006.
L
O O P T O W E R
In March 05 journalist Ralf Christensen and Danish Radio invited Jacob Kirkegaard
for a one-week residence to Berlin, as part of the project 'Urban Art Stories'.
The idea was to record sounds from Berlin and compose with them for a live broadcast
to Denmark.
For this occasion Jacob Kirkegaard chose to record the sound of the Berlin
TV Tower. With the use of accelerometers and other sensitive sound gear he
got access to the mechanics inside the massive globe which made the restaurant
spin.
Recording the circular motion from the wheels, wires and bearing elements far
above the ground this work is a commentary to spinning matter; from ancient
imaginary music of the planets to the use of loops in contemporary sound art.
S P H E R E
SPHERE is a collection of VLF (very low frequency) recordings of the Northern
Lights (Aurora Borealis). It was captured during travels in Iceland in the year of 2004. Kirkegaard used
electromagnetic antennas in order to pick up the electric and magnetic oscillations
of the solar winds. At dawn, dusk or at night the Ionosphere acts like mirrors
which enables ground based recordings of the phenomena. The Ionosphere also
explains why short wave radio is stronger at night.
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