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Nils Frahm: Networked Spaces

The German musician and composer Nils Frahm visited Copenhagen in April 24 during which Overgaard curated an exhibition at VEGA focusing on Nils Frahm's collective approach to music creation. 'Networked Spaces' is a collective work composed by Simon Littauer that consists of sounds from Nils Frahm himself, as well as the musicians that Nils Frahm has invited on stage during his residency, Øyunn, Simon Littauer, Otto A. Totlander.

The sound work is immersive, which means that the sound surrounds you when you are in the room. The various soundtracks are played from a system consisting of 16 loudspeakers installed in the Ideal Bar. The work is created so that you can walk around the room and experience different versions and moods of the work depending on where in the room you are. The work invites immersion in the musicians' collective processes and the experience of the architecture that surrounds the music.

The sounds were combined with sound portraits of VEGA and FUNKHAUS. The latter is Nils Frahm's musical home in Berlin and the photographs displayed on screens across VEGA were taken by Nils Frahm's father, Klaus Frahm. FUNKHAUS was completed in 1951 - VEGA in 1956. FUNKHAUS functioned as a radio station controlled by the Soviet Union, hence the name 'Funk', which means radio in German. Both VEGA and FUNKHAUS are surrounded by a past in politics, today they contain music. FUNKHAUS functions as a studio and concert venue, VEGA as a concert venue. The sound portraits were recorded by Robert Borg and Nils Frahm and will also be implemented in the two staircases leading up to the large VEGA.

Röyksopp: Profound Mysteries

In October 2023 Majken and the team at VEGA Beyond expanded the Norwegian electronic music duo Röyksopp’s recent releases Profound Mysteries into a 3D experience at VEGA. The exhibition took its starting point in this quote from Röyksopp:

"As human beings, what we don’t know vastly overshadows what we do know. As teenagers, we would discuss our own fascination and preoccupation with the infinite and the impossible – the most profound mysteries of life."

Most people have experienced what Röyksopp describes in the quote. During our teenage years life opens up to us. Often through images, literature and music. Whether it's finding solace in the lyrics of a favorite song or image or experiencing how visual expressions become a bridge that connects us with kindred spirits as they bond over discovering new artists and genres. These forms of creative expression hold a special place in young hearts and minds and have the power to bring us back to a state of wonder as we grow older.

Through situated videos, visuals and 3D sound created by Röyksopp and Jonathan Zawada they would like to invite you to join on a collective journey to our young(er) selves - when we were open to mysteries.

The Desktop

The Desktop explores the desktop as a portal between our digital and physical lives. It features a series of digital works created by the artist Spøgelsesmaskinen aka Rune Brink on custom LED panels, an installation, a projection, and printed editions.

The exhibition was shown in November-december 2023 at Bricks Gallery, Copenhagen.

Do you remember the first time you logged on to a desktop computer? How it felt like the world expanded and you gained access to a different place and a new state of mind?

The Desktop takes its starting point in the feeling of transcending the physical and losing oneself in a digital realm. The computer desktop is a metaphor - when the first interfaces were designed they mimicked the physical desktop. We were given the objects that we were familiar with - making the digital a continuation of the physical life. Spøgelsesmaskinen traces the idea of the graphical user interface to where it all began, the physical desk, and connects it with visions of past and future computers. Historically, the desktop was a physical manifestation of power, whoever was in control was situated behind the mahogany desk. Today, the desktop computer equals work. Offices, cubicles and never-ending days behind the screen. The pixel is the basic structure in the works and pays homage to this unique digital material and provides each individual work with an air of nostalgia. We have had the personal computer for a long time. We can now look back at our history with our computers and the various generations of desktops and reminiscence.

IRL/URL

In 2022 at Catch - Center for Art and Technology Majken Overgaard had the pleasure of curating a residency and exhibition with the artist Line Finderup Jensen. Finderup Jensen works with 3D software and creates videos, installations and interactive experiences in VR. In 2022 she was exploring the relationship between videos created in game engines and classical painting on canvas.

She built 3D worlds on the computer and developed them into works that can be experienced either through VR or video installations. Selected scenes from these 3D worlds were then transferred onto a physical canvas. The artistic process thus begins in the digital, and is then transferred to the canvas.

For a long time, digital artworks have only been accessible via the computer, but today borders between our digital and physical realities are starting to blend. Both because technologies develop, e.g. augmented reality becomes more widespread, virtual or auditory layers extend the physical reality (e.g. Pokémon Go), but also because our digital identities become more important to us and we need to make the different formats exist across the realities we find ourselves in.

The residency and exhibition was supported by Creative Europe.

DataChoreographies

DataChoreographies focused on how the changing boundaries between humans and machines push what we understand as art, research and everyday practice. The last century we have moved from using individual, isolated computers to designing sophisticated networks of computers that collaborate across and with us. A data choreography consists of mutually dependent computers who, through their individual actions, realize larger, joint tasks.

Through a series of workshops, the subject of data choreographies was discussed and new approaches for collaborations between data science research, art & curation was explored collectively. The discussions, reflections and questions informed an exhibition of prototypes and reflections that was shown at Catch - Center for Art, Design and Technology in 2021. The exhibition was realized through an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and Roskilde University (RUC), Catch - Center for Art, Design and Technology as well as artists Jesper Just and Honey Biba Beckerlee, creative coder Andreas Refsgaard and choreographer Simone Wierød as well as Passage Festival. Graphical design was created by Johanne Aarup Hansen. Photo credits Christian Brems.

The exhibition was supported by the Danish Arts Foundation.

Data, Data, Data

Today, many people struggle with the task of exerting control over the utilization of their personal data. Therefore, I developed the exhibition Data Data Data with the Technical Museum of Denmark. The exhibition explored how we can create awareness of data use and its consequences, it was shown at Catch - Center for Art and Technology in 2020.

Data trading has become one of the largest business areas in the world today. We get free access to new apps in return for providing data about ourselves, which is often resold in a global marketplace. In the exhibition we showed examples of how storage, processing and understanding of data has evolved over time. Examples of analogue storage of data in various materials from the late 1700s and 1800s to several of the technological breakthroughs happening in the 20th century, including magnetic and optical data storage. Furthermore, we showed the installation “The Data Garden” created by the art collective Grow Your Own Cloud.

The installation explores and challenges the enormous data systems that invisibly dominate and infiltrate our world. By working with living material such as plants, Grow Your Own Cloud aims to affect how we understand and relate to data. The project stems from a critical standpoint towards the current, monopolistic data landscapes and wants to spark a discussion about potential computational futures.

The exhibition was developed in collaboration with Roskilde Festival, Unlisted Projects (US), SXSW (US). It was supported by the Danish Ministry of Culture.

The Northwest Spiral

The Northwest Spiral is a permanent, hanging light installation developed for the central room of Culture House Nordvest in Helsingør in collaboration with Stine Polke-Pedersen and artist Jakob Kvist. The grant for the light installation was given by Helsingør Municipality shortly before the first COVID19 lockdown was implemented in Denmark.

This meant that we had to rethink the format and concept. We wanted to create an installation that could create dialogue and a sense of togetherness despite the isolation we were all subjected to. Therefore, we developed a process where citizens in the local area could pick up a colored lamp of their choice and place it in their window.

The social project became a great success. All lamps were placed in the windows and you could walk around the neighborhood in the evening and experience the many colored lights. It broke with the sense of isolation and loneliness for many and brought instead the sense of connectedness and local engagement. After a month's exhibition in the local homes the lamps were returned and assembled into one large installation in the Culture House Nordvest.

This means that locals today have a unique connection to the light installation. The installation has transformed the culture house from a relatively anonymous building for the local area's users into a cultural landmark. It is a unique installation that moves playfully across the central space of the house and creates an atmosphere that makes everyone who walks through the door sense that this is a place where everyone is welcome to experiment and explore.

The installation and process was supported by Helsingør Municipality.