Jacob Kirkegaard

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.
B R O A D W A Y
Five channel installation. Five columns, 60 exciters. Duration of loop 20 minutes. © 2007.
For the gallery at the Swiss Institute, Jacob Kirkegaard has produced a new work named after the Swiss Institute's location on Broadway in Manhattan. The piece "Broadway" is a five-channel sound installation that comprises the columns that run through the gallery space. Although elements of the building's architecture, the columns also transmit subtle vibrations generated by movement on the street below. The internal sound of each column has been recorded with accelerometers and is played back into the columns by means of sixty small exciters. Thus the five columns are transformed into loudspeakers, each of which plays the sounds of Broadway in its individual resonant frequency. With this piece, Kirkegaard not only outlines a multifaceted portrait of Broadway as idea, location and historical concept - he also offers a unique means of experiencing the reverberations of an urban environment, conducted vertically by the columns.
A I O N
Audiovisual installation. DVD. Duration 50 minutes. © 2006.
This work aims to unfold four abandoned spaces inside the Zone of Exclusion in Chernobyl, Ukraine. It deals with a sonic and visual experience of time, absence, and change - in an area haunted by an invisible and inaudible danger, amidst the slowly decaying remains of human civilization.
The sound of each room was evoked by an elaborate method: in each room, Kirkegaard made a recording 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.
For the visual representation, two of the four rooms employ a recording technique parallel to the sonic layering. A video camera was placed on one particular spot in the space and it recorded non-stop from there. This recording was then projected and recorded with another camera tine and time again. In this process, some of the rooms turned darker, others turned brighter; they reveal themselves on the screen, they dissolve into white light or they disappear into darkness. For the two other rooms video feedback was used to under- and overexpose the image.
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.
E L D F J A L L
CD. Released on TOUCH, London © 2005
This CD is recordings of subtle volcanic vibrations in the earth around the area of Krisuvik, Geysir and Myvatn in Iceland. These very condensed and rhythmical trembling sounds from inside of the earth were captured using accelerometers (high-sensitive contact microphones). The accelerometers were placed below the surface of the earth at various places around the geysers. Here they picked up sonic characteristics of volcanic activity right below the surface of the earth. "Kirkegaard's album is an absolutely effective portrait of the chaos that generated everything, a meeting point for vital and destructive forces, threatening and regenerating at the same time." From 'Blind Sound' by Daniela Cascella. 'Sound Art', Resonance Magazine, London June 2005. ELDFJALL has been performed live in in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Latvia, UK and in the USA.
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.
H O T E L C H O R N O B Y L
9 photos. Size 39,8 x 29,6 cm. © 2006.
This work is photographic view inside the one and only hotel existing inside the Zone of Exclusion in Chernobyl, Ukraine. I stayed there during my visit to the Zone in October 2005.