Phonetics meets art at Nobel Week Lights
An interactive artwork outside Storkyrkan in Stockholm creates sparks of light from music and visitors’ voices. The artist Tove Alderin has collaborated with Mattias Heldner at the Phonetics Laboratory in the creation of the work.
The annual light festival Nobel Week Lights is arranged in collaboration with the Nobel Prize Museum. During one week, a number of artworks are presented in public places in Stockholm's inner city.
One of the artworks at this year's festival is Tove Alderin's Orchestrated entities_ Chorus outside Storkyrkan in Gamla stan. Here, sound is transformed into sparks of light that form a pattern over the church's facade. Dona nobis pacem and NASA's Earth song, that captures the electromagnetic phenomenon usually called Chorus, is played and visitors are invited to lend their voices and thus become co-creators of the work.
Phonetic analyzes behind the artwork
Professor in Phonetics, Mattias Heldner, has collaborated with artist Tove Alderin on several occasions. Among other things, he contributed to an exhibition at the House of Sweden in Washington and to the set design for a concert with Anna von Hausswolff at Dramaten theatre in Stockholm. For "Orchestrated entities_ Chorus", he has made acoustic analyzes of pitch in vocals. These analyzes form the basis of the programming that controls the light projections in the artwork.
The work has previously been shown in a different version during the festival Allt ljus på Uppsala in 2021.
Last updated: December 7, 2022
Source: Department of Linguistics/Phonetics Laboratory