Jonas R. Kirkegaard

COMPOSER | SOUND ARTIST

JONASRKIRKEGAARD@GMAIL.COM

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RIPPLES (2024)

ARTISTIC IDEA

Flutenist Ann Sophie Rønne Andersen got the idea to do a concert for new music in a public swimming pool. The idea was to perform a mix of electro acoustical music and new classical music in the rather unusual surroundings of the beautifully renovated public bath of SPANIEN in Aarhus, Denmark. She was the project responsible trough the whole process, and got the swimming pool management on board, applied for funding and established a collaboration with Aarhus Lydforening to help organize the event.

I was commisioned to do a piece, RIPPLES, for the concert, and Ann Sophie, Maria Isabel Edlund (Cello) and Sofie Thorsbo Dan (Violin) performed excerpts works of Ligeti, Robert Aitken and Kaija Saariajo as well as improvisations and a version of “Jeg Drømte Mig En Drøm I Nat”, arranged by Ann Sophie as well.

RIPPLES is in four parts, and entails 2 loudspeakers plus sub, video projection in the ceiling and 50 floating devices generating light and subtle sound.

Floating light and sound boats at swimming pool SPANIEN in Aarhus - before the concert
Sofie Thorsbo Dan in the dim light before the concert
Ann Sophie Rønne Andersen performing excerpt from Icicle by Robert Aitken at the sound check

RIPPLES – part 4

Here you can listen to the last of the 4 parts of RIPPLES. It is a simple chord progression heavily manipulated and layered with glitchy textures. Among other stuff the two old Native Instruments devices  PRISM and Skrewell are used.

Floating boats

The 50 floating devices, consist of a styrofoam disc, with a diametter of 200mm and 25mm thick. It has a custom made pcb with a powerful warm LED, driven by a mosfet, with a from the PWM output of a Attiny85 micro processor. On another PWM output a piezo disc is connected, and attached to a cardboard cup for amplification.

The LED is directed downwards into the styrofoam to disperse the light. It is slowly pulsating and  a decelerating pulse train where short audio pulses and synced light bursts appear.

One of the boats floating in the swimming pool
Ceiling visuals. Simple Touch Designer patch generating a particle cloud

Visuals

The visuals in the ceiling, was a simple particle cloud made in Touch Designer, which I’m just getting to know. It was moving very slowly and I didn’t have time to make audio reactive or other fancy interactive stuff. Also, I didn’t have time to  adjust the projector properly or to blur the edges and make it look smooth in the ceiling of the swimming pool. So, there’s room for improvement.