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THE ORIGINAL ARRANGEMENT WAS FOR A SOLO VIOLIN AND A STRING ORCHESTRA

2012

Mixed media installation

Imperata cylindrica grass, reel-to-reel tape with The Four Seasons, video, SEM photographs, prints, drawings, objects, micro-controller, greenhouse

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SOUND

Special thanks to NRK Hordaland and Irene Heggestad of the University of Bergen, Laboratory for Electron Microscopy.

The work consists of several objects and images of very different origin. The natural plant is placed next to a dismantled tape recorder, on shelves are the tools and objects of research on display, a pile of paper with digital codes is placed under a growing lamp. The visitor is invited to take part in a live process: the sound of a tape containing Antonio Vivaldis The Four seasons, changes and deteriorates every day due to the iron particles falling down while running through the machine. A plant grows, extremely slow under a growing lamp, a person carefully takes off the layer of a magnetic tape.

 

All these actions are not stunning or spectacular in themselves, they seem to be part of a daily routine of a scientific research. But the aim of the research is not a clear result or message. This research creates a doubt which raises in the mind of the public: why does a plant need metal to grow? Why does the music disappear?

In 'The Original Arrangement was for a Solo Violin and a String Orchestra', iron hyper-accumulating grass were cultivated in the scraped of iron from a reel-to-reel tape with The Four Seasons. During a longer period of time the plants extracted the orchestral information, before the plants subsequently was dried and incinerated in an oven. The remaining iron-containing ash were then glued back to the original tape and played. In the installation the visitor could observe the process and listen to the plants interpretation of the music.

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