Jacob Kirkegaard performing Opus Mors live at Simultan Festival, Timisoara, Romania, 2019 (Photo by Petru Cojocaru)

M O R G U E

World premiere at BLOOM - Festival for nature and science,
Copenhagen, Denmark, May 25th, 2019

New choir piece especially composed for BLOOM - Festival about Nature and Science, Copenhagen, Denmark.
MORGUE is a composition made from Kirkegaard's ambient sound recordings of a morgue; its ventilation and cooling systems that all
make the room subtly vibrate. The room tones from the morgue were transcribed and interpreted for voice.
Morgue is compsosed for- and performed by two choirs; ARS NOVA CPH and the choir for seniors; ALLEGRO KORET
World premiere on 25th of May 2019

This is an excerpt of Jacob Kirkegaard's choir piece MORGUE composed in May 2019 for BLOOM - Festival for Nature and Science in Copenhagen on May 25th, 2019. MORGUE was performed at the Cisterns by two choirs simultaneously; ARS NOVA Copenhagen and Allegrokoret and lead by Katinka Fogh Vindelev

S i g n a l s

4-channel sound work created for Code Art Fair in Copenhagen, that portrays the sound of early digital and coded communication.
The work utilizes recordings of military morse code used to transmit classified communication between warships and naval bases.
Morse code is a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones in sequences of short and long signals called "dots"
and "dashes. It was developed in 1837 and was used for early radio communication, before it was possible to transmit voice.
Live @ Art Bar, Papirøen, Copenhagen, Denmark, September

Sound recordings of melting ice for Dries van Noten Summer 2017 Women's Collection fashion show in Paris, September 28th, 2016

E U S T A C H I A - for Two Voices
- a new otoacoustic work for voice composed by Katinka Fogh Vindelev & Jacob Kirkegaard
To be premiered live at Art Alive! at LOUISIANA - Museum of Modern Art, Denmark on the 7th of May, 2016
Check out the full program HERE

Jacob Kirkegaard as Sound Artist in Residence at Oxford University, 2016

St John’s College at the University of Oxford is delighted to announce that Jacob Kirkegaard will be our inaugural Sound-Artist-in-Residence for 10 weeks between 10 January and 19 March 2016. Kirkegaard—a sound artist who works in carefully selected environments to reveal unheard sonic phenomena—has presented his works at galleries, museums and concert spaces throughout the world, including at MoMA in New York, KW in Berlin, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark. His residency at St John’s College will find him involved in a range of activities, from presenting his otoacoustic installation “Earside Out” (18 January-24 January 2016) and lecturing on his work (Friday 22 January 2016), to collaborating with students on a brand-new sound-work slated to be heard in the St John’s Chapel on the 4th of March 2016.

Earchestra is a new vocal work built from tones generated in the inner ear. These tones, called spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (or SOAE), are produced--without external stimulation--in the ears of some people. Whereas the combinations of tones emitted from one ear can be dissonant, microtonal and complex, tones emitted from the other ear can be harmonious and 'in tune'. Each emitting ear produces something akin to an acoustic fingerprint; these are the basis of the composition.
As part of his residency as Sound Artist at St John's College (University of Oxford), Kirkegaard has recorded and collected tones generated inside the ears of students and staff from a wide number of differnet colleges at Oxford. These recorded 'ear chords' were filtered, analyzed, and then interpreted for voices. Earchestra connects two intimate organs of our body: the ear and the throat. The ears are the composers, the throat and mouth are the performers.
Earchestra will be presented live by the very same 30 individuals whose ears produced the tones that are at the heart of the piece. The performance will take place in the Chapel at St. John's College, Oxford University at 7pm on Friday 4th March 2016.

B U D A

Live and as sound installation at Mørke Dage i Aalborg, Denmark, October 23rd

30 min © 2012 - 2015
A sound portrait of an Ethiopian exorcism ritual
Buda (or bouda), in Ethiopian folk religion, is the power of the evil eye. During en excorism ritual priests intervene and perform exorcisms on behalf of those believed to be afflicted by demons or buda. Demon-possessed persons are brought to a church or prayer meeting. Often, when an ill person has not responded to modern medical treatment, the affliction is attributed to demons. Unusual or especially perverse deeds, particularly when performed in public, are symptomatic of a demoniac. Dialogue with the spirit is an important part of the exorcism ceremony. It helps the exorcist to know how the spirit was operating in the life of the demoniac. The signs and events mentioned by the spirit are affirmed by the victim after deliverance. The recordings used in Buda were made in Ethiopia in 2012 and edited in Berlin in 2015

Ondes Corti - Suzanne & Farrin & Jacob Kirkegaard playing live at the Gothenburg Biennial in Sweden, Sep 2015
Photos by Attila Urban

O N D E S  C O R T I

For the opening of GIBCA Suzanne Farrin and Kirkegaard will premiere their composition, Ondes Corti!
The concert will take place at Folkteatern in Gothenburg on the 11th of September, 2015

Ondes Corti is a series for inner ear tones and ondes Martenot written by Jacob Kirkegaard and Suzanne Farrin. The musical materials are derived from tones produced by the ear itself projected through live electronics and in dialogue with one of the earliest electronic instruments: the ondes Martenot.

The ondes was first imagined at the top of the Eiffel Tower by Maurice Martenot, an engineering student and amateur cellist who was drafted during the First World War to work on radio transmissions. Depressed over the destruction, he had a vision that these tools could be transformed from destructive to beautiful. He dreamed of creating an instrument that could communicate directly with an audience with no impediment other than "the imagination of the performer." He eventually believed that the performer would be able to "think" an interpretation and the audience could receive the music telepathically. The result is an instrument that is an expressive, other-worldy machine and also the most technically advanced musical instrument of its time (the 1920s).

These expressive tones also exist within the ear itself and appear remarkably similar timbrally to sine waves. This musical fingerprint is the result of spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAE)s, which are sounds that are generated in the Organ of Corti without external stimulation. They are perceptible, though often go unnoticed, and can be recorded with sensitive microphones. Like human sound signatures, they are a window to the immense diversity and richness of the human identity.

Ondes Corti will explore these inner and other worlds: what we create and what we are capable of receiving. These pieces will unearth the tones hidden in nearly every individual's ears and create musical poetry that exposes and embraces the sounds that connect us.

Acoustic Diagnostic' at the National Centre for Contemporary Arts., Kaliningrad, Russia, 2007

Labyrinthitis live at Museum of Freud's Dreams, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2006

Artyom Ostapchuk & Jacob Kirkegaard live in St Petersburg, Russia, 2006

Aeter, live, Denmark and Sweden, 2001

Aeter, live at LAB, Copenhagen, 2000

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fonik.dk | 2002