Jacob Kirkegaard

Ambient sound sculptor and photographer Jacob Kirkegaard creates works that thematically engage the human perception of hearing from field recordings. He captures sound and vibration in order to signify the energy of place. He reveals as tangible the sounds of geysers, desert sands, melting icebergs, the ruins of Chernobyl and Fukushima, and other places normally off-limits or inaccessible, and makes them all tangible. Encountering his work on its terms results in reencountering the world we live in. Key works include 2005's Eldfjall, consisting of geothermal vibrations recorded in Iceland, and 2008's Labyrinthitis, created from recordings of the inner membrane of his ear.

Kirkegaard graduated from the Media Art Academy in Cologne in 2006, but he began releasing his sound works through a variety of labels as a student. His debut was 2002's Soaked (with <a href="spotify:artist:17Woab4l0eJybbj5ymknYK">Philip Jeck</a>) on the U.K.'s <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Touch%22">Touch</a> label, which he has worked with ever since. He followed it a year later with 01.02 on <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Bottrop+Boy%22">Bottrop Boy</a>. In 2004, he was a founding member of the sound art collective freq_out, who released freq_out [0—∞Hz] for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Ash+International%22">Ash International</a>. Between 2005 and 2008, Kirkegaard issued three major works through <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Touch%22">Touch</a> -- Eldfjall, 4 Rooms (recorded in an abandoned chapel in a still radioactive Chernobyl), and Labyrinthitis -- the album that has long been considered his masterwork. He has also exhibited sound installations and photography at institutions throughout the world, including Museum of Modern Art, The Hood Museum, LOUISIANA, ARoS, KW, The Menil Collection, Rothko Chapel, Aichi Triennale, and Mori Art Museum. Kirkegaard's work is in the collection of LOUISIANA Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

In 2012, he collaborated with Tobias Kirstein on Imperia for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Posh+Isolation%22">Posh Isolation</a>, a manipulated field recording from the defunct nuclear power plant in Barsebäck in southern Sweden. He returned to <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Touch%22">Touch</a> with 2013's Conversion, an LP that included two pieces based on Labyrinthitis and "Church" (from 4 Rooms) in collaboration with the Danish classical ensemble Scenatet. The same year, he worked with pioneering Danish sound composer <a href="spotify:artist:1F085NZpCugoNzi6u5gw3t">Else Marie Pade</a> (1927-2016) on Svævninger, issued by <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Important+Records%22">Important Records</a>. 40 Days of Silence, a soundtrack for the film by Uzbek director Saodat Ismailova, was released on <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Von%22">Von</a>.

ARC was the first of two works that appeared in 2015. Originally commissioned as a soundtrack to Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Kirkegaard used fragments of music from her time, and stretched it to expose the mystically charged atmosphere that could simultaneously declare the saint both a visionary and a heretic. His second offering that year was a triple-cassette entitled 5 Pieces for <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Posh+Isolation%22">Posh Isolation</a>. These works included the underwater recordings of "Æsturarium," which turns the sounds of the Hudson River and its swirling sediments into a 29-minute white-noise suite; "Iron Wind," which captures the vibrations of German fences; "Déjà Vu," a feedback conversation between eight empty rooms; "Fool's Fire," an electrified needle picking up radio waves from crystals; and "Under Bjerget," a 58-minute meditation of rattling tubes in a Copenhagen basement, glacially moving from drone to pulse to rumble. Rolling Stone magazine selected it as one of its Top 20 Avant Albums of 2015 -- despite the fact it was issued in an edition of 200 copies. A year later, Kirkegaard was named sound-artist-in-residence at St. John's College, University of Oxford, U.K.

In 2017, he and fellow Danish sound artist <a href="spotify:artist:2Weyatu9cuo5uMjMySIH24">Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard</a> collaborated on Descending, two long pieces created from room resonances and performed by the <a href="spotify:artist:1VdLMRDzrV0JtFSOnk2em6">Aarhus Jazz Orchestra</a>. <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Important%22">Important</a> released two Kirkegaard albums in June 2019: CD Phonurgia Metallis and limited LP Black Metal Square, both consisting of pieces for piezo sensor and contact speaker. In September of the same year, TOPOS, an arts organization co-founded by Kirkegaard, released Opus Mors, a four-LP set themed around death, featuring recordings from autopsies and morgues. Time Is Local, a collaboration with <a href="spotify:artist:6UaYVZHa4gmjroNhpJiRWN">We Like We</a>, appeared on <a href="spotify:search:label%3A%22Sonic+Pieces%22">Sonic Pieces</a> the same month. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi