Travels in hyperreality no. 1 (2026)

performed by Jennifer Torrence and David Cariano Timme

This work is part of my ph.d project in artistic research at the Norwegian Academy of Music. The project is an artistic exploration of the concept of "hyperreality," where I use headphones, binaural sound, live cameras and other technology to create extended and distorted auditory realities, in which the sound of reality, amplified and intensified, is seamlessly composed with a virtual soundscape, altered to a level where the listener has difficulty distinguishing between the two.

About the work:

“The emergence of the "frame" is the condition of all the arts and is the particular contribution of architecture to the taming of the virtual, the territorialization of the uncontrollable forces of the earth. It is the frame that constitutes painting and cinema just as readily as architecture; it is the architectural force of framing that liberates the qualities of objects or events that come to constitute the substance, the matter, of the art-work. The frame is what establishes territory out of the chaos that is the earth.»  Elisabeth Grozsh

Instead of focusing on the sound object itself as the main point of the composition, I try in this project to zoom out and focus rather on the frames of perception - how to manipulate, control and compose with these different perspectives - this is the core of my artistic research. The framing devices I use as my basic compositional tools are different types of technology - a variety of microphones: binaural ones that capture the sense of space, wearable microphones that lets us listen through another persons ears, parabolic microphones that can isolate a sound from a long distance, contact microphones that zooms in and heighten small sounds and movements - as well as differently placed and overlayed cameras, lights, flashlights, projections and scenographic elements - all framing devices that frame our audiovisual perception in potential new ways. This is my toolbox. 

So for my first artistic project in my ph.d. - which resulted in a work with the somewhat boring title Travels in Hyperreality No. 1, and was developed with percussionists Jennifer Torrence and David Timme through workshops, with a performance on January 27, 2027 - I decided to work with this idea of framing quite literally. Creating a space, an instrument of sorts that consisted of three black room dividers doubling as projection surfaces, two performers each holding a microphone, and two cameras capturing their movements from behind the room dividers.

Framing is the keyword. The physical frame, as a projection surface for something that is behind or in front; the camera as a framing tool; the flashlight; the contact microphone, etc.

Grozs describes the meanings and possibilities inherent in a partition: «The partition projected forward induces the wall, which constitutes the possibility of an inside and an outside, dividing the inhabitable from the natural (the chaotic), transforming the earth itself into a delimitable space, a shelter or home. The wall divides us from the world, on one side, and creates another world, a constructed and framed world, on its other side. Though it primarily divides, the wall also provides new connections, new relations, social and interpersonal relations, with those on its other side…»