2019 was the year I finished my Master's degree (in Art and Technology, University of Limerick) and to my great surprise I landed an actual job where I get to do art and explore digital systems. I list a few highlights below and end it with an intention for decade to come in the shape of one of my favourite poems by Karin Boye.

Exploring Fragility through Audiovisual System Design and Performance

- the title of my master's thesis. Much time and effort this year was poured straight into my master's thesis and the works surrounding it.

Fragility is a rich concept deeply ingrained in our human condition of mortal beings living in a transient world. It can be readily found in religion and art, but is strangely absent from art discourse. This thesis explores fragility as a metaphor for art making and puts it to practical use in digital audiovisual live performance. A performance system including a Digital Musical Instrument (DMI) is presented together with a composition for the system and a performance of that composition.

Scarda

The scarda digital musical instrument was part of my master's thesis work, an effort to explore fragility in audiovisual digital performance systems. Not much has been published about it here, but I recently made a video of me playing Kristallen den fina on it:

Audiovisual Art

Brytpunkt treats the crossing of worlds, their coalescence and separation, and finding something where nothing was.

Software Art

By a huge stroke of luck I got in touch with a professor at KTH interested in working together on software art resulting in me having a very interesting day job since a few months back. It's still early days, keep an eye on rethread.art to check out what we're doing.

Microtonality and xenharmonics

2019 had me thinking about pitch in smaller and smaller intervals. How about 53 notes per octave, or maybe 106? An introductory blog post will soon be accompanied by more ideas for playing music with more and better pitch ;)

2020

There are already plenty of adventures waiting for me in 2020. Going to transmediale in January, writing for percussion trio, audoivisual duo projects, developing microtonal DMIs and of course continuing my journey into software art.

Intention for the future

Karin Boye is one of my favourite poets. The following poem was published in 1927, when Karin Boye was the same age as I am now. Not only has my work this year circled around fragility, but I think our global huamnity is waking up to its own fragility as well. Karin's words are a great hope for the strength of the weak, like a credo to life and the living world.

Jag vill möta...

Rustad, rak och pansarsluten
gick jag fram --
men av skräck var brynjan gjuten
och av skam.

Jag vill kasta mina vapen,
svärd och sköld.
All den hårda fiendskapen
var min köld.

Jag har sett de torra fröna
gro till slut.
Jag har sett det ljusa gröna
vecklas ut.

Mäktigt är det späda livet
mer än järn,
fram ur jordens hjärta drivet
utan värn.

Våren gryr i vinterns trakter,
där jag frös.
Jag vill möta livets makter
vapenlös.

- Karin Boye