KOMPASS is part of the artistic research project Image as Site at Stockholm University of the Arts, where Ellen Røed and Signe Lidén have developed a method for field recording that combines sound and image in a distinct form of attentional (aesth)ethics. In various forms of camera-based field recordings, Røed and Lidén explore how instruments, time and movement are included in and affect the relationships between bodies, images and places, between experience and representation.
After a series of field work in particular sites, where they worked with a continuously evolving rig, the artists shifted their attention from the field recording situation to the potential of the insights and material generated through these situations, in relation to an exhibition space, Trafo Kunsthall in Asker. Here they reorganised and developed the rig as well as the recorded audio-visual material with the aim to create fields of sound, images and devices that could afford a particular form of attention, not unlike what they had developed through the field experiences.
Continuing their investigations, they developed an installation through a composition of sound, video and sculptural elements that could offer multiple perspectives to the viewer, create a sense of something passing through and around the space as currents of sound and image and that could be modulated by the viewer's movements in the space.
Sound was mediated in the room through field-rigs, reorganised structures that had initially been developed to record sound and image material in the field. Cameras, sound recorders and microphones that were mounted on the rigs were removed, and replaced by linen membranes that mediated sound. Membranes of various sizes, each with a specially composed acoustic layer, were distributed through the room. Some sounds would appear and disappear depending on where one would be in the space. Moving around in order to see and hear the various details would alter the appearance of the sounds and rhythms occurring. By placing the ear close to the linen membranes, one could discern how the perception of space changed according to the character of the sound.
A multi-channel composition of film material recorded in different locations were displayed across four screens that were mounted vertically around the room. The composition afforded a sense of movement that passed through the room as images would seem to move from one screen to the next, or repeat across the room in rhythmic patterns. Each image consisted of two, apparently identical images, vertically juxtaposed on top of each other, as a square consisting of two fields. These synchronised fields met in a joint that also appeared as a fracture, a form of horizon, or horizontal split, which were not inside the images, but between them. At the top and bottom of the screens there were empty surfaces, black fields.
Through their work with the sound and camera rig, the artists ask questions about what it means to engage in, perceive, observe, listen, film, record, be in and relate to the surroundings. Their respective art practices emanate from sound and moving images. Lidén often makes recording instruments that are set up to record the movements of the place without being controlled by intention. Røed, on her part, works with devices designed to collect data from the environment borrowed from various fields of knowledge, such as meteorology, to activate relationships between the device, the environment and the resulting images. In both practices, the instruments register processes occurring in their surroundings but they also make recordings of themselves, of their own materiality and technology.
Adjustments of focus are performed by the cameras themselves, in interaction with the light as well as the movements in both the forest and of the rig, caused by wind and gravity. By combining equipment from the film industry, such as jib and other devices for camera movement from film, with a mode of thinking found in the practice of field recording in sound art, the artists challenge these practices and highlight an approach to recording that, through attention, time, listening, adjustment and experience, takes into account the active connections that sound and images form; relationships between the operators, their bodies and the devices as they all work together and form an environment.
The field recordings of the project KOMPASS were made in various forests, forest plantations and forest seed archives, as well as on Mandø, a small island located in the Wadden Sea, part of a tidal zone that extends from the Netherlands, along Germany and up along the coast of Jutland, Denmark. The rising and falling of the sea on the island means that it is connected with the mainland only when the tide is at its very lowest. The tides of Mandø and the constant and changing winds that sweep through both its shores have become part of the method, shaping the language and the attentiveness of the fieldwork of Røed and Lidén. The local and localised experiences of the sites, the island and the forests, enable new understanding of being present, of observation in a recording situation, and also in different situations that are connected to it such as looking, hearing, carrying, rigging and balancing. These experiences are mediated through the recording equipment, the rig, and stored in the recordings.
While it is the flowing and ebbing of tide that control the time intervals for recording on the island, by the sea, the recordings in the forests are primarily made before and after dawn, often from 3 am to 10 am. The intensity of bird song escalates as the light rises with the breaking of dawn. Occasionally, Røed and Lidén also filmed around sunset and dusk when bird song decreases, humidity rises and the sound of insects and traffic dominates.
Over a period of two years and at different times of the year, the artists visited different forests in the south-eastern part of Norway. The forests in Ådal, where Røed og Lidén worked during the spring and summer of 2021, are shaped by timber farming and harvesting. Here, the rig was set up on the border between young and old farmed forests and fields that have grown freely after being clearcut. In some of the longest recordings, the rig makes 360-degree sweeps where these different forest types become visible. In the audio recordings, the difference in vegetation can be heard through the variation and density of birdcalls and how the acoustic resonance of their calls change, or from how the wind moves through the trees in a different way.
Another location, the Sannerud forest seed plantation has fields of spruce, birch and alder, farmed to provide genetically healthy seeds. The trees are planted in grids to collect seeds and pine cones, and the trunks of the spruces are felled at a height of 3-5 meters. The recordings from the plantation fields were made over several days from dawn to early afternoon.
Over several periods between spring 2020 and autumn 2021, Røed and Lidén worked in an old-growth forest near Gravningen in Finnemarka, on an elevated mountain plateau high above railways and car-traffic. The mixed forest here has a rich bird and insect life, and the moss-covered forest floor has large fields of cranberry and blueberry bushes. They had found a site a few kilometres from the nearest road were they stayed with the rig during periods of recording. Making coffee on the primus, adjusting the cameras or setting sound levels, every task was undertaken while being attentive to the rig and its surroundings. The close listening to the forest continued through the nights and days. For the few hours between dusk and dawn, they would install themselves in hammocks in the trees surrounding the rig. When unpredicted rain showers, fog or strong breeze occurred, the nights were spent adjusting and safeguarding the rig. In response to their first excursions, Røed designed and sewed wind-, rain- and insect-proof clothes with an outer layer of sound insulating wool, clothes that would ease the experience without impacting on the sound recordings. This forest, situated deep within Finnemarka, is maybe the only location that can strictly be called a forest; not a mono-cultural plantation of trees but an old and rich ecosystem with a diverse range of species and high density of trees. Ironically, on the audio recordings from the first day of shooting, in June 2020, there is a constant presence of a timberjack and the sounds of falling trees in the distance.
Some movements in the landscape are so slow that we do not perceive them. They take place at such a slow rate that our short-term memory will not notice them, so gradually that our memory is continuously rewritten, or in such a large scale that we are already encompassed in the movement. Maybe the camera does not register them either. Not until the wind grabs the rig, pushes or pulls on the sails, the lenses and the microphones. Gravity helps them resist the movement. The rig is a point, a pendulum, a site where different forces are interacting with each other. The mounted devices, cameras, microphones are witnesses, carrying testimony, so are we, operators of the system.
From the onset, the rig must be in balance. Otherwise, gravity will take over and control, if not seize, all movement. All joints must be level, if they are not everything has to be disassembled again. This involves finding large, flat stones and dragging them through the waterlogged bog in order to create a more stable ground, a foundation. Then to reassemble, rig everything again: balance, level, tighten sails and level again, before the earth`s rotation makes the daylight dwindle. As the wind weakens, the movements rest. The forest is full of sound, but the images are silent, still, like photographs. Stronger winds push or pull on the sails and shift the balance, creating panning movements that reveal more forest, other trees. In a certain way, the movement reflects the panoramas of the late 19th century, a cinema of attraction, where spectators went, not to take part in a story, but to experience movement. But where the pans of the 19th century produced landscapes, we are concerned with the tension between the sensible and that which cannot be directly perceived.
The parabolic-like sound membrane made of linen also acts as a sail. It is a wind trap that records vibrations in the air and belowground. Like a geophone, the membrane picks up the deepest, inaudible sounds from underground and accompanies the abstract movement of time when the cameras are completely still. The structurally monotonous material, with a fixed camera position and minimal action, evades narrative. It reflects an ecological thinking while emphasising sensing without presenting explicit ethical arguments.
While analysis of images of nature often reflects a way of thinking that distinguishes between nature and its representation, Røed and Lidén seek to develop an aesthetic in which pictures are not considered as separate from what is depicted in them. Images are materially and socially in and of the world. Artwork, artist and nature are part of the same field, all ongoing, all becoming. How they connect to each other is a question of ethical and ecological concern. Here images are not just visual expressions. They are relational, performative, they are both a site and a form of process. They are part of the environment, of what is around us. The environment that forms and passes through us, through images, through sound. Lidén and Røed's images emerge in a network of interactions rather than as a result of planned actions controlled by intention.
The two cameras are set in a fixed relationship to each other, with a pivot point that enables them to tilt and pan on the vertical and horizontal axis. They have almost identical viewpoints and record more or less the same image. At the same time, they have different material conditions in terms of their optics, mechanics, electronics. Different sensitivities and different logics of operation. Assembled into a single picture, these structural conditions of the cameras are subordinated in favour of what one sees. The images are brought together in a way that activates vision without implying a hierarchy between content and appearance. The meeting point becomes a joint as well as a rupture.
The split between the two almost identical images focuses the viewer's attention. In a similar way the rig serves as a needle in a compass to align its user with the magnetic fields of the earth, thus supporting their navigation. It serves to mediate presence. The line, which catches the eye, breaks the spatial continuity of the visual field, like a horizon. In the middle of the forest, this horizon breaks the verticality of the tree trunks. At the same time, it serves to expand the visual field, enabling the trunks to stretch out of their image, further up, into the next field.
Simultaneously, the sound fluctuating through Trafo Kunsthall through various vantage points, modulates the experience and seems to expand the image, stretching the forest, or tidal zone across the room. As the audio-visual composition moves between the four screens and multiple linen membranes of the exhibition, mediating sound, the cinematic experience is unfolded and becomes spatial, three dimensional as well as immersive.
Both the sound material and the sculptural structures in the exhibition space are organised in accordance with an ambition to activate the recording situation and form zones where the audience actively form part of the sites that emerge. Some sounds are closely connected to what is happening on the screens, for example as the rustling wind pulls on the rig and renders a turbulent movement in the images, while other sounds reveal what occurs behind whatever is happening in the picture, such as adjustments of the mechanics of the rig, realigning the balance (by adding objects to the attached wire basket) or the rustling of clothes, whispers. A similar shift can be experienced when lowering one's head towards a linen membrane, focusing one’s listening closer to the vibrations of the sound in the linen, where the frequency spectrum is expanded and the field opens up a larger spatiality.
When the wind is strong, the cameras rotate in a panoramic swipe. As the movement ceases, sails in the lee, the image dwells on a close up of a single trunk for a while. It changes character from depicting panoramic fields of trees that together constitute forests, landscapes, - to being portraits; a portrait of a tree trunk stretching towards the light, slowly.
The winds calm down as the cameras point to the east, where the sun has just appeared between the trees and hits the lenses. We lie under the rig and listen intensely for a gust of wind that will pull them away from the sharp light. We are listening through the image, or rather, we are listening through our own image of what the cameras see. A lizard rustles past and finally we hear the stirring sound of the wind approaching through the trees. The image is set in motion. Through sweeping pans, in different phases and speeds, sites emerge. Mainly forests, but even as a horizon consisting of sky and sea, with varying degrees of land in between as the tide rises and falls. In Trafo Kunsthall, the composition lasts about an hour, but it is not intended to be experienced in a specific time. It forms a texture, characterised by silence and rotation, phases and displacements, rhythms and frequencies.