sound - Harm van den Berg

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Developing generative software (emergent clocks) to control sound compositions for sound installations (with programmer Coen Konings).

The Invisibility of Colour, 2023, 20-channel audio installation at gallery SANAA - in situ (2,5 x 5 x 0,05 metres)

For this sound installation, Van den Berg interviewed people to name and describe colours. Hundreds of these spoken colours sound through 20 invisible loudspeakers spread over a large white surface.

Performance Midori Iro, SANAA Gallery

The Invisibility of Colour, 2023, drawing and 20-channel in situ sound installation at puntWG, 3 x 3m

16-channel sound wall (2.5x5m) and 7-channel sound column installed during AIR Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, 2018

At my studio in Amsterdam, I am currently working on completing a new prototype sound installation. Specifically, this installation features a white wall that incorporates 24 invisible loudspeakers, allowing the sound to flow out of the wall wherever, whenever, and in any order. With this installation, I want to create an emergent and spontaneous order consisting of sounds, leaving more to chance.

I add randomness to the sound compositions, allowing me, as the creator, to disappear more into the background and offering the viewer an emergent experience of a spontaneously arising ordering of sounds. The score in the picture below has been created using a true random number generator (TRNG) rather than the algorithmic-controlled random generator (PRNG) used in most software.

Score_001TRGN, 2022, random composition for 79 samples, duration 10 minutes.

Photo: 24 channel sound installation, 8 x 3 meters, KiK Kolderveen residency 2017
Small trees have already lost their leaves in July 2018 due to the extreme heat

Sound Walk (2018)

Networks, complexity, and emergence play an important role in Harm van den Berg's work. His research as an artist-in-residence in Diepenheim focuses on the sounds of hidden natural phenomena. During his stay, Van den Berg took the same walk every day, often carrying a recorder to collect sounds such as growing corn, singing ants, and mating hedgehogs. He also recorded expressions of the cultural life of the Diepenheimers themselves. The outcome of his research was a half-hour sound walk.

While walking with headphones and an audio player, the listener is immersed in a story of hidden worlds. One of its leading themes is the serious impact that the extreme heat and drought had on nature and the community during the summer of 2018 - it was the hottest summer since weather measurements began. Van den Berg makes you look at the surroundings of Diepenheim in a new way, showing how natural and cultural networks coexist within its small community, and how strong and flexible, but also vulnerable, their connections are.

The sound walk can be heard during the opening hours of Kunstvereniging Diepenheim

Concept and production
Harm van den Berg (in collaboration with Pépé Smit)

Music by
Vincent van Warmerdam

Thanks to
Martine Berghuijs
Forest ranger Jan Kistemaker
Harrie Alberts
Group 3 and 5 of Obs Stedeke,
Miss Inge and Miss Mirthe
Jannie Smale
Historical Society Old Deep'n
Singing Choir de Deepse Troubadours
De Harmonie Diepenheim
Kunstvereniging Diepenheim
Sound Studio De Slapende Hond
Mondriaan Fund

The artist-in-residence is part of Binnenlandateliers of the Mondriaan Fund and a collaboration with Werkplaats Diepenheim.
Sound recording of 'singing' ants

Spoken Colors / Random Paintings
Gesproken Kleuren / Toevallige Schilderijen

In search for a new kind of painting. I made a piece called Spoken Colors/Random Paintings. It consists of a CD containing 54 spoken colors by different people on 54 different tracks. The sound work is both a painting and an exhibition. Each time you play the CD (with ‘random’ function on) a different painting can be heard because the order of colors changes. The number of possible paintings outnumbers the atoms in the universe.

2003
NL/ENG
Edition: 300 + 500
Design: Ingrid Scheinhardt

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