Ringar í Vatni
Six speaker sound installation
A sound installation can augment and/or challenge the environment where it is situated. It can shape your thoughts and draw you nearer or push you farther away from the given place. It can join you or separate you from the given place and present you with ideas, thoughts or issues brought on by this joining or indeed the rift that might occur.
This particular sound installation started at a certain place with some imagined sounds arranged in a sound environment to be played back. Whilst making the installation ideas, thoughts and issues were formed and contemplated. These were fundamental in shaping the installation. However, I feel, that by sharing these ideas, thoughts and issues, particular to me, I would in some way be polluting or contaminating eventual ideas, thoughts or issues particular to you, the individual listener. So I urge you, to listen and experience this installation unguided by me or anyone else really, except yourself, at first. If you curiosity still has the better of you after a while, I have a written text about the origin and ideas, thoughts and issues central to this installation. Scroll to the bottom of this page to find the text
The idea for Ringar í Vatni started in the big ravine in the village Gjógv on the Faroe Islands. There are several metal rings attached to the bedrock down by the sea for securing boats and tools. I imagined it would be nice to make some music using these sounds in real life. I.e. not sampled and used in a traditional musical context. The rings are scattered over a rather large area and fastened so there would be a spatial aspect to the listening experience as well. I quickly settled on the title “Ringar í vatni” which is Faroese for “Rings in Water” describing the ripple effect.
When I had decided to do this as a sound installation, I wanted to sample the sound of the rings when they are nudged or dropped and then organise them in the computer. Rather than organising the rings by pitch and then composing in the traditional maner using pitch/frequency and time, I decided to build upon the title and imagine the ocean playing the rings. I then recorded sound of ocean waves and extracted intensity information from these recordings to play back the sound samples of the rings. I also used the sound from the waves as audio in the composition. This ties nicely to the ripple effect of global warming.