«Life-boats»
Notam Cato Langnes was recently in Aalborg. He mounted recorders and tuned the sound according to the inside acoustics of the artist Marit Benthe Norheim’s three ‘Life-boats’, three sculptural boats signed the artist Marit Benthe Norheim. They represent three different life stages, is 12 meters long and hand cast in concrete. The sculptures were launched on June 18 and will sail through Europe this fall and in 2017. Inside the boat there are embedded speakers, and the sound of these is planned by Cato with attention to the resonance and frequency responses. The boats gives three different musical styles. The music created by composer Geir Johnson, who also in previous artistic projects have collaborated with Norheim. Cato stood for the technical planning and the securing of the system, amplifiers and reproduction of the sound in the form of CF-sound (sound on compact flash disks), and in collaboration with the composer mixed and mastered all audio material to the respective sound installations at Notam.
The boats are die cast by hand in concrete and propelled by environmental friendly, electric engines. The launching on the 18th was in connection with the Aalborg regatta and in co-operation with Århus, European Capital of Culture 2017. The Life-boats arrives in Århus on the 12th of October and continues their voyage through all the big cities and towns built around the big European rivers and canals. The project binds the cities together in an exchange of culture, a big part of history. The artist Marit Benthe Norheim completes hereby her 8 year long project. As long as humans sailed the seas, they must have had the urge for protective symbols. The figurehead, to shield against unknown dangers, has always been both a reminder and admittance of the irrational, an aspect of the spiritual as something needed. In this case the figurehead has become the boat itself and not just keeping a lookout from the bow. Each of the sculptures has its own identity and tells a story which the form relats to, and is a threefold portrait of different, human states. «Life-boats» is a piece of art one is able to experience by chance when they pass by. At the same time, they can be entered to experience the inner installations, both artistic and technical, when they find harbor. The audience can sail the ship, at the same time experience the sculpture and the sound installation.
The music for ‘Life-boats’
More about «Life-boats»
More about Marit Benthe Norheim
Former projects by Marit Benthe Norheim
CV Marit Benthe Norheim
More about Geir Johnson