mikro performance

mikro performance, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

Mikro is a series of improvised performances using the immediate surroundings as raw material: A microscope captures everyday objects and surfaces like wallpaper, coins, clothing, furniture, newspapers and transforms it into an explosive universe of textures. Contact microphones and electromagnetic sniffers pick up unhearable sounds to create the live soundtrack.
Mikro is a collaboration between HC Gilje (video) and Justin Bennett (sound).
Performances so far:
Paradiso (Amsterdam), IMAL (Brussels), TAG (den Haag), DNK (Amsterdam), Bergen Kunsthall Landmark (Bergen), Laznia (Gdansk)

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one year, two to go

multimorf_screengrab1, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

It´s now a year ago since I started with my research fellow project “Conversations with spaces”. It´s been a busy year, and the last few months I have not been able to follow up the blog very much unfortunately, mostly due to my work with the two soundpockets projects I did as part of Urban Interface Oslo (which runs until oct 7th). I will come back to this project in a later entry.
I made a small trip to Ars Electronica, and had a nice talk with Julien Maire and Pablo Valbuena, and I might write a little bit about their projects later.

The image for this entry is from a performance I did yesterday, making a visual landscape for a concert written by Knut Vaage. I used the textures of the instruments, mainly brass instruments, as my source material, and had my first go at programming opengl shaders for the live processing.

I am doing a small tour this week together with Justin Bennett with our Mikro project, live sampling of our surroundings using microscope and EM sniffers ++. We play in Brussels on thursday october 4th, Den Haag sunday the 7th and in Amsterdam on the 8th.
I will also be part of a group show in Brussels, which is the opening of the new space of IMAL. I will show the three-channel version of nodio there.

The queen is the supreme power

The queen is the supreme power 2, originally uploaded by hc gilje.

(Slideshow from the rehearsals and performances here)

My latest collaboration with Yannis Kyriakides is a piece based on old telegraph code books. I use scanned pages combined with microscope texture from these books and project onto the orchestra from two sides, using the musicians as screens in combination with a wide screen behind, trying to create a dynamic space using text fragments and letters as projected light.

It is a coproduction between ZKM in Karlsruhe and Musikfabrik in Cologne, and is performed may 17th in Cologne and on the 18th at ZKM.

microscope textures

from my flickr pages: a 200x magnification from the cover of a telegraph code book.

One of the interests in my project is to use technology to see and hear things we normally would not perceive. I have started to look at my everyday surroundings through my microscope, discovering explosive textures in quite ordinary-looking material. This has also developed into a live performance collaboration with justin bennet, click on the mikro tab at the top to find out more.