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IMPREC 462CD
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The sound art of Jacob Kirkegaard explores ways to reflect on immediate complex, unnoticed or unapproachable aspects of the human condition or civilization. His works have treated themes such as radioactivity in Chernobyl and Fukushima, melting ice in the Arctic, border walls in Palestine, and tones -- otoacoustic emissions -- generated from the actual human ear. Currently, Jacob Kirkegaard works on two projects, one is on the sound of global waste and waste management. The other on sound environments related to the immediate human post mortem. With his peculiar alchemist approach and extensive research, complex phenomena and current conditions are portrayed through composition, installation, video. and photography. Rather than providing answers, his portrayals create spaces for reflection. Kirkegaard has presented his works at galleries, museums, biennales and concert spaces throughout the world. Edition of 300.
"One of contemporary sound art's most subtle, intriguing figures. More artistically minded than field recordings, more naturally hewn than noise tapes, Kirkegaard amplifies hidden worlds into evocative drifts." --Rolling Stone, December 2015
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TONE 047LP
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In collaboration with Danish ensemble Scenatet, Jacob Kirkegaard's two pieces "Labyrinthitis" and "Church" are here interpreted by classical instruments. The intention of this transformation into an instrumental score is to explore the musical dimension and potential of the sounds that were used in creating the original works. "Church" from 4 Rooms (TONE 026CD) originally consists of ambient recordings of an abandoned church inside the radioactive zone in Chernobyl. "Labyrinthitis" from Labyrinthitis (TONE 035CD) is a canon of oto-acoustic tones generated by the artist's own ears. Like most of Kirkegaard's sound works, both pieces are characterized by a strong focus on methodology, and by the artist's wish to omit any deliberate emotional or "musical" intention. Jacob Kirkegaard is a Danish artist focusing on scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time, sound and hearing. His installations, compositions and performances deal with acoustic spaces or phenomena that usually remain imperceptible. Using unorthodox methods for recording, Kirkegaard captures and contextualizes hitherto unheard sounds from within a variety of environments: a geyser, a sand dune, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, and even sounds from the human inner ear itself. Based in Berlin, Kirkegaard is a graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. Since 1995, Kirkegaard has presented his works at exhibitions and at festivals and conferences throughout the world. He has released five albums (mostly on the British label Touch) and is a member of the sound art collective freq_out.
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TONE 035CD
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This is Jacob Kirkegaard's third album for Touch, after Eldfjall (2005) and 4 Rooms (2006). Born in Denmark, now living and working in Germany, Labyrinthitis was commissioned by Medical Museion in Copenhagen, summer 2007, and was first presented at the international conference "Art and Biomedicine: Beyond the Body." Jacob Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: His new work Labyrinthitis is an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist's auditory organs -- and will cause audible responses in those of the audience. Labyrinthitis relies on a principle employed both in medical science and musical practice: When two frequencies at a certain ratio are played into the ear, additional vibrations in the inner ear will produce a third frequency. This frequency is generated by the ear itself: a so-called "distortion product otoacoustic emission" (DPOAE), also referred to in musicology as "Tartini tone." By arranging the tones from his ears in a composition and playing them to an audience, the artist evokes further distortive effects in the ears of his listeners. At first, each new tone can only be perceived "intersubjectively": inside the head of each one in the audience. Kirkegaard artificially reproduces this tone and introduces it, "objectively," into his composition. When combined with another distorting frequency, it will create another tone -- until, step-by-step, a pattern of descending tonal structure emerges whose spiral form mirrors the composition of resonant spectra in the human cochlea. Paradoxical as it may sound: we can listen to our own ears. The human hearing organ -- still often perceived as a passive unidirectional medium -- does not only receive sounds from the outside, it also generates its own sound from within itself. As a matter of fact, it can even be "played on" just like an acoustic instrument.
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TONE 026CD
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This is Jacob Kirkegaard's second release for the Touch label, after Eldfjall. Born in Denmark, now living and working in Germany, here he explores one of the worst man-made disasters in history. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, 1986; clouds of radioactive particles were released, and the severely damaged containment vessel started leaking radioactive matter. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the city and other affected areas. Despite the fact that radiation is still being emitted from the nuclear disaster site, the 900-year-old city of Chernobyl survives, although barely. As of 2004, government workers still police the zone, trying to clean up radioactive material. Some -- mostly elderly -- have decided to live with the dangers and have returned to their homes in the zone's towns and villages. The effects on the environment were catastrophic: huge areas of northern Europe were dosed with radioactivity. This work is a sonic presentation of four deserted rooms inside the "Zone of Alienation" in Chernobyl, Ukraine. Jacob Kirkegaard deliberately picked rooms that once were active meeting points for people: a church in village Krasno, an auditorium, a gymnasium and a swimming pool in Pripyat. Two decades after the event, Kirkegaard explores the phenomenon of radiation with the medium of sound. By listening to the silence of four radiating spaces he aims to unlock a fragment of the time existing inside the zone. Silence, unfolding in space. The sound of each room was evoked by sonic time layering: in each room, he recorded 10 minutes of it and then played the recording back into the room, while at the same time 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). Lucier recorded his voice in a space and repeatedly played this recording back into that same space. In this work, however, no voice is being projected into the rooms: during the recordings Kirkegaard left the four spaces to wait for whatever might evolve from the silence.
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