Skagen employs modes of research and investigation to create sound and object based installations. His production is a continuos adventure and analysis reflecting the possibilities within his immediate environment. Where the rational explanations is questioned by the introduction of a phenomena, thesis or concept. Where the work can not be explained trough logic alone. But by the questioning of one’s own paradigms of beliefs. A critique to the superego and the subject and object as a divided and separate mass, rather than a unified, connected, resonate and vibrant result of the same source. A play with the illusion of history as well as the presence and potential future.
The Inward Rising
By: Stian Skagen and Monica Winther.
Installation at Heine Onstad Art Center; Oslo, November 2008
sound, light, video, object, language and painting.
Supported by the Art Counsil Norway. Norsk Kulturråd.
The Inward Rising was the result from a one year research in paint pigments reflective and absorbing light
qualities. LED light was programmed to change the colors reflecting from the painting. Various
patterns and color combinations build up a large painting that in constant change as the lights are changing.
Installation view.
Installation view.
The object was the source for a sound and video composition.
The three dimensional object was deconstructed to is's surfaces.
The edges divided into lines
The lines converted into time by it's units, cm=sec.
Sound composition score, time=form.
The deconstructed object was then used as the score for a composition, where each line
was given a combination of frequencies. This composition was played through a costume built
digital
oscilloscope. The oscilloscope was recorded to video and projected onto a wall in the space.
Video Still from oscilloscope.
Video still from oscilloscope.
Video documentation.
This text was for the observers of the installation and was published in
Notams "Absorbsjon og Resonans" sound art book.
The Inward Rising
The power of the human mind, to imagine the irrational,
beyond the infinite, problem or thesis.
1) Reaching truth outside logic.
Intuition.
Impossible.listening.
Thought projection towards the infinite. Space.
Division.
2) A phenomenological world has risen.
That which is a thought is also a sound. A pattern. Form. Wave.
An ineffable experience.
The process of substance and
Blurred outlines of direct
Perception.
Sense certainty is multiple.
Resolvement and transcendence.
Interconnecting in a self
reflective process.
3) Past.Potential.Future.
Materialized into moments of
the whole.
Particle explosions reverberate. The resonance of matter.
Consistency. Submerged state.
Counter perception. Bright spot on retina.
Bursts unfolding upon bursts.
Emitter = Object
Offer = Phenomenon
Absorber = Observer
Confirmation = Explanation
4) “The emitter can be considered to produce an "offer" wave which travels to the absorber. The absorber then returns a "confirmation" wave to the emitter, and the transaction is completed with a "handshake" across spacetime.”
5) The observers explanatory systems, neurological, physiological and psychological,
generates a "sense hypothesis". This sense hypothesis changes the actual observed object, from its pure being, to a mentally understandable object.
The external comprehended by the internal.
The object has changed, from its pure form, to a mental projection.
6) “Suddenly it occurs to me, that I am the object. And I am mediating with myself again.”
________________________________________________________________________
1) God is the garden.
Einstein said: “ I need to achieve the objectivity to read Gods mind.”
Ironically losing his objectivity as he denied his contemporaries theories about quantum mechanics.
Nikola Tesla the great inventor and electrician, presented his AC converter and magnetic field generators, this was the materialization of an idea, sense or emotion, “within”. In witch he reviled the very essence of our material world.
2) In the installation “I am driven by the flame that shaped us.” our aim is to unify the parallelism of the “inner” vision and the “outer” world, by accepting the “appearance” of an external phenomenological ineffable experience. This spatiotemporal vision is materialized to the proportions of a sound, light and object based installation.”
3) TIME=FORM.
4) John G. Cramer (born 1934) is a Professor of Physics at the University of Washington in Seattle, U.S. From his lecture on the Behavior of Photons.
5) The observer’s paradigm validates and drives the perception and experience of the object, towards an explanation and a mental content.
This content varies according to the paradigm the observer represents.
The inward rising results in a natural scientific and psychological understanding of the whole. Suspend your current natural paradigm!
6) I do not consider my self as a sound artist, sound art is specific and relates to sound as tradition. Sound has a quality, which is not found in other media such as the visual arts and sculpture, I use this quality in my artistic production, it builds up the very essence of my work, and this essence may also appear as visual art and sculpture.
Excerpts from Bjørn Hatterud's review for KUNSTKRITIKK ;
Stian Skagen and Monica Winther has created some of the most powerful I've experienced in an art museum ever. At the head of the room is a Tableau with something that looks like a roughly carved huge stone in front of a fantastic painting, abstract, partly op-art, partly emo-conceptual, in neon and neatly composed stripes.
The painting and the stone is exposed to changing light in different colors, which makes different parts of the painting light up, and disappear, so that different patterns supersede each other. And at the same time – what one hears all the way from one enters the door to the center - bathed the room in loud sound.
The sound is murky and dark. I hear trees falling, the roar of waterfalls, creepy creatures, or the roaring emptiness of space. Skagen, perhaps best known from the duo Ryfylke, has also previously profiled himself as a creator of extreme soundscapes, bathed in black soil, pierced with ants and worms, rumbling and morbid.
The sounds, along with the stone and the 60’s psychedelic forms on the canvas, gives me associations to 2001 a space odyssey, with the spacecraft that glides slowly through space, the experimental lightshow towards the end, and the stone falling from the sky. I do not know if this is intentional, but on top of it all, the work, as the film, the theme is time: According to a large drawing that hangs on the wall, the stone was used as the score for the soundscape.
order.and.progress
sound light language & optics installation at "hit that piece of ivory there" nymusikk oslo norway
in the early beginning of the middle age leonardo of pisa, later known as fibonacci published his research concerning the numerology of repeating events found in nature. these numbers are referredto as the fibonacci sequence, the sequence stated that each number is the
sum of the two previous numbers. this sequence, if represented as a geometrical shape, was called the golden section, a common geometrical structure found in architecture, visual arts and the morphology of nature.
the repeating events builds up a structure, the structure is applied to sound and processed through an electromagnetic vibrator. this vibrator is transferring mechanical vibration to the glass window the vibrations are received as sound as the window amplifies the signal.
Light waves have a high
frequency when measured
near its source. The light
travels from this source and
stretch as the environment
that contains them expand.
A wave or vibration has the
ability to be recived as sound
if the propper conditions are
present. The conditions are
the material.
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, || repetition || 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233,
image.storage
video.documentation
high_res.jpg
low_res.jpg
andprogress.mp3
order.and.progress.pdf
time=form
stenersen museet 2006
"..in 1967 Hans Jenny made use of his own inventions crystal oscillator and tonoscope which made it possible to define the chain of events that made patterns appear in sand when the surface that contained it was vibrating. he located and measured the amplitude , frequency and duration within the vibration and was able to control all the variables himself. he made the possibility to see and hear sound at the same time. this research was called cymantics and contained the science of structure and dynamics in waves and vibrations." Stian Skagen, [concept.virus] series I.
sound signal generates image on lcd monitor.
video.documentation
time=form.pdf
[signal] was made using the same principals
signal.movie
resonate.pattern
stenersen museet 2006
a custom built sub frequency speaker cabinet is producing hundred and seven decibel in forty-five hrz. this frequency is produced by two eighteen inch hi-end speaker elements driven by a fourteen hundred watt amplifier. the resonance is reinforced and prolonged by reflecting on to its neighboring objects. the sound takes on the form of mechanical vibration and travels through the architectual structures of the building and the audience surrounding it. the frequency is made by two digital oscillators. these oscillators are in phase and therefor cause long pulses that varies from silence to vibration.
the sound signals are interpreted by a modified digital oscilloscope, the oscilloscope is projected on two opposite walls. this allows the audience to walk into the projection and be resonated by sound and light.
video.documentation
infinite.perspective
performance at Sala Beckett, La Porta 54 Barcelona.spain 2004
q. describe your use of a concept. a. concept is a system or a set of rules that trigger shape or constrict a behavior or action within a given environment. it may be a geometrical shape a formula or an equation. the concept represents the formal understanding of this environment.
in “coming through” erwin panofskys “perspective as symbolic form” was used as a fundament for constructing a concept. mathematical formulas and geometrical perspectives applied to 2 dimensional visual arts were converted and applied to sound and movement in 3 dimensional space. these forms and perspectives limited the movement to symmetrical patterns and lines in the defined space. each line
and pattern was given a frequency that was manually changed according to the movement. as the movement was inaugurated a point in perspective was established. the points and lines constructed geometrical shapes in a spatial system.
the infinite, within a space that is both continuous and homogeneous
infinite perspective within a continuous space
and a homogeneous concept
Maria Jesus Fajardo Martinez
photo.code
exhibited at SALONG100. 2004 oslo. norway
a digital photo is pixels put together in a system to form the image. the pixels is given a value, its color and place. this information is in an array. the array is compiled by s numeric code. this numeric code can be converted by its numbers to sound. the .jpg is changed to .aiff and the photo can be played back as sound. the sound was compressed and put into a mobile phone hung on the backside of the photo. when the phone was called the photo played its sound. in some museums its common to have numbers hung by different artworks. when the numbers are called the observer is played information about the work. theatricality and absorption.
