Handmade Sounds
UK, Norway, Sweden, Iceland & Denmark
2017 - 2018
Innovation in music and the Nordic region go hand in hand - with many musicians applauded internationally for their use of unique instrumentation in their work contributing to a body of works that are creating a sound world expressed through the technologies of the 21st Century. The Handmade Sounds project brought together a Nordic network of artists with their UK counterparts seeing composers and performers working with made instruments, both traditional and electronic, across a broad spectrum of genres to deliver a series of residencies, performances and a number of pan-Nordic collaborative experiments.
Bringing together leading creators of experimental musical instruments with composers and performers from Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and the UK the project established an intra-Nordic network of musicians to showcase and explore the ever growing influence of the handcrafted in sonic arts and music through a series of new productions and high-profile international performances.
The project kicked-off at UK City of Culture in Hull 2017, where we created a space for artists participating in the project to perform - both for large public audiences and for their project peers - and set up a series of experimental temporary installation spaces and workshops to encourage participants to work together and developing new ideas. We created a number of hands-on labs exploring the ever-growing world of music made through hand-made and hacked interfaces working closely with Eyvind Gulbrandsen and The Danish Institute for Electronic Music (DIEM) - enabling the collaborative creation of music and interactive installations incorporating light, sound and other media. This allowed participants to take the best of experimental music in both analogue and digital worlds to new possibilities and showcase their works at Aarhus and Reykjavik throughout the year.
Artists included: Ragga Gisladottir, Nordic Affect, Pinquins, Eyvind Gulbrandsen & the Royal Northern College of Music, Halldór Eldjárn, Jobina Tinnemans & Jacob Tekeila with the Hull Choir, Equis, Sebastian Edin, Rosyan, Tronhjem, Alex Mørch & Jez Riley French.
Supported by Nordic Culture Point
