Biosphere commissioned works

Biosphere on Radio France Culture
Sunday 21 September 2003, 22:40-24:00
Autour de la Lune, a new piece commissioned by Radio France Culture´s Atelier de Création Radiophonique,and the French Ministry of Culture.
The piece will also be available on France Culture´s website from 22-29. September.
France Culture

The Catchpool Found Sound Project

Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, 19. March 2005

Saturday night Wellington´s While You Were Sleeping electronic music collective presents the Catchpool Found Sound Project. Utilising environmental field recordings, from native bird song to wind in the trees, Victoria University electro-acoustic students captured the sounds of Wellington´s Catchpool Valley recreation area. These recordings have been passed onto a myriad of electronic musician composers who in turn have used these sounds to create an eclectic mix of musical offerings composed entirely from these sound recordings. Biosphere will headline this event with his translation of these field recordings.

Biosphere sound installation at The Storr, Scotland
1. August - 17. September 2005

nva presents THE STORR at Trotternish, Isle of Skye from August 1st - September 17th 2005 with pick up points at Portree and Staffin, tickets £25 (concessions apply).

Every night at midnight, nva, Scotland's acclaimed environmental arts company and creators of The Path the legendary millennium event in Glen Lyon, will be taking an audience of around 200 on an extraordinary journey through the wild northern landforms of the Isle of Skye, to walk up to the iconic Old Man of Storr and the high cliffs above Coire Faion.

Enigmatic installations will illuminate the massed pinnacles and buttresses, tracing the longest single landslip in the UK, while powerful soundscapes drift down from the ridges above.

Equipped with headlamps, guides and walking sticks, the audience takes a three and half kilometre, at times strenuous, walk which will take up to two hours to complete. They will witness one of Europe's most dramatic and inspiring landscapes at night, whilst nva create an immense landscape work, lowing among the unique geological features. A specially developed new 'Hansel and Gretel' reflective light network will create a path through the beautifully lit rock formations. Contemporary sounds from the Norwegian composer Geir Jenssen, based in Tromso, and the voice of Skye's legendary poet, Sorley MacLean, along with live song will drift down from the mountainside, creating an intense and personal experience for each walker.

For further information on how to book tickets, accommodation and travel links, please visit www.nva.org.uk

Essential information

Please note that the journey is arduous; the path climbs from near sea level to around 1500 feet; the weather can change rapidly from a warm still evening with lots of midges, to a wild night when the wind drives the rain across the hillside. Participants MUST be appropriately clad, reasonably fit, and used to walking in the Scottish hills (or similar).

Children aged 11 and under MUST be accompanied by an adult,who will be responsible for their safety. Babies and toddlers will not be admitted to the event.

• By purchasing a ticket you accept the risks involved in participating in this event.

• The Storr involves a strenuous nightime walk on a path that climbs almost 1500 feet.

• Even in summer the weather can suddenly become cold, wet and windy.

• For safety and comfort you need to be reasonably fit and need to have waterproof clothing and sturdy boots.

• Children aged 16 or under must be accompanied by a responsible adult; there should be one adult for each child of 11 and under; babies and toddlers cannot be admitted.

The Storr Unfolding Landscape project won the Team of the Year award at Scottish Enterprise’s Dynamic Place Awards 2005

The Storr Unfolding Landscape project was a unique landscape animation set against a backdrop of great cliffs, shattered pinnacles and rock falls of the Storr in the north of Skye. Sound, lights and projection, temporarily installed within the Storr Woods and on the hillside above, were used to reveal accumulated perspectives on geology, culture and belief. Over 8,000 night-time visitors enjoyed the unique aural and visual experience during the late summer of 2005. The project attracted a large number of tourists to Skye and enhanced the reputation of Scotland as a first-class tourist destination through the world-wide press coverage that the event received.

Dynamic Place Award Judge, Stephen Tucker said of the project: “The project was a unique and extraordinary example of reconnecting people with the stunning landscape of Scotland through the medium of art. Through the ingenuity and dedication of the team behind the Storr experience, working with national agencies and local people, visitors were treated to a once in a lifetime experience.”

The Samphire Tower
Samphire Hoe, Dover, England

A grant from The Arts Council of England has been awarded towards the implementation of the sound installation in the tower. This will be installaed during 2005. The sound installation envisaged for the interior of the Tower will develop organically through the collaboration between Geir Jenssen and Jony Easterby, with technical support from the engineer Graham Calvert of the company Sound Tech.
more info

Hålogaland Teater, Tromsø, Norway
7. September to 14. October 2006
Music: Geir Jenssen

New Biosphere sound installation:
Does Music Affect Plants?

17-19 May 2007, 6-10pm
The Winter Gardens, Surrey Street. S1, Sheffield, UK

Commissioned by Lovebytes, curated by snd and produced by Umol Xsapida.

The Sheffield Winter Gardens is one of the largest temperate glasshouses to be built in the UK during the last hundred years,
and the largest urban glasshouse anywhere in Europe. It is home to more than 2,000 plants from all around the world.

TROMSØ
Arctic Trombone & Lowbrass Festival
Geir Jenssen: Pneuma (a composition for three trombones)
Sparebankens Festsal, Saturday September 29th, 19:00
more info: http://www.atlf.no

Biosphere presents
Outside By The Fjord - The Ullsfjord recordings
Fondazione Musica per Roma, Rome, Italy, Friday January 18th 2008, 21 pm
more info

Trine Falch and Ingvild Holm: "Kom og se"
- the history of theatre as a hypertextual tragedy

Black Box Teater, Oslo, Norway
Thursday 14.2. – Sunday 17.2, 2008, 7 p.m.

On stage: Trine Falch, Ingvild Holm and Geir Jenssen

Music: Geir Jenssen

More info

Geir Jenssen: The Doppler Shift
New composition for three trombones and electronics.
Sparebanken´s festsal, Tromsø, 11. October 2008
more info

Teaterhistorien død og/eller levende

With Trine Falch
Music: Geir Jenssen
Hålogaland Teater, Tromsø, Norway,
2-4. October 2008
more info

Geir Jenssen: Månen Er Et Bål

A composition for the exhibition Hommage á Iver Jåks.
Opening at Tromsø Kunstforening, Norway, 22. August 2008, 20:00
more info

There will be no more Biosphere concerts in 2008.
I am tired of flying. I hate airports, security checks, unhealthy food, air conditioning, hotels, etc.
Back to nature!

On The Edge

foto: Atle Grimsby

Public benches are normally meant for sitting down for a rest, reading a newspaper or simply watching people coming and going.
On 12 April there will be an unusual addition to the bench population of our district, benches complete with mp-3 players run by solar panels.

Sonic Vista consists of a series of 10 unique, hand-made public benches, especially adapted to incorporate sound and visual art.
Two of these will be placed at a lighthouse.
The Sonic Vista benches have been designed as a coproduction between Nuproductions and British musician/designer Mil Stricevic.
The benches are developed and hand-made in cooperation with the Randaberg company Ranso AS.
They are one hundred per cent environmentally friendly and made from quality timber from Rogaland.

Geir Jenssen/Biosphere has made the sound-track "Snurp 1937" for the Utsira lighthouse.
David Toop has composed the sound-track for the Eigerøy lighthouse.

This is a cooperation with the Stavanger 2008 project: A World of Sound.

The benches are inaugurated at the Utsira lighthouse on 3 May at 1 p.m., and will remain on location until the end of February 2009.

more info

Markers In The Landscape

Rock carvings from the Bronze Age transformed into sound.
Outdoor audio and video installations on a Bronze Age site just outside Stavanger.
3-12. October 2008, 20:00 - 23:00 pm
Austre Åmøy, Stavanger, Norway

One of the main mottos of Stavanger2008 is openness. It is just such openness to external impulses that is reflected in the Bronze Age discoveries.
There was lively contact across large parts of Europe and the neighbouring areas to the South and East.

The Bronze Age is one of the few pre-historic periods from which a wealth of pictorial material remains.
This is perhaps best expressed in the rock carvings that still form a part of our landscape.
The rock carvings were ritual meeting places. Today they can also be regarded as art.

The people of the Bronze Age expressed their world of ideas through these carvings.
Today, too, the rock carvings are surrounded by a certain mystic aura,
even though meticulous research has decoded some of the 3000-year-old messages.

Through the project Markers in the Landscape, Rogaland County Council gives contemporary artists
the opportunity to create commissioned work/installations inspired by our knowledge of the world of ideas and
artistic effects of the Bronze Age. The idea is to exhibit these works by the original 3000-year-old sites to give
the audience an experience of the monuments that cannot be expressed in words. With the new, but authentically-based,
experience by the original sites, the project seeks to open the minds of the spectators to this strange and distant past.

The production company Nuproductions has been engaged as a partner on the production side.
Geir Jenssen – better known as Biosphere – has also been invited to participate.
Geir Jenssen is a leading composer and musician within the electronic music genre and has experience of similar projects.
Light installations are also being planned in addition to the sound background.

The island of Austre Åmøy has been chosen as arena for the installation.
Here, the rock carvings can be seen in more or less their original environment, without much modern interference.

More info: numusic.no, stavanger2008.no, rogaland.no

ALBUMS

SINGLES

COMPILATIONS

REMIXES

SOUNDTRACKS

COMMISSIONED

NEWS

DISCOGRAPHY

SHOP

MP3s

PHOTOS

BIOGRAPHY

LINKS