Music is found at SoundCloud under the artist name Skavank.
For now, I upload and take down sketches as I make them. An official release will come whenever I feel ready and have found a coherent style.
Art portfolio 2019-2022
Keywords: Audiovisual art, data visualisation, projection mapping, spatiality, VJ’ing, sound, interactivity, physical interaction.
Student at Art & Technology, 2019-2022 – Aalborg University
Jesper Thiemer (b. 1996) is an installation artist working with technology as an aesthetic. Data and technology is everywhere and can be put into any context. The message and politics of technology is what generates the most curiosity unto what is possible in the boundaries between art, philosophy and technology. The span of interaction between human and technology is avast and will be explored through different technologies utilizing technical subjects such as programming, sound, light and motors, altering people’s perception of technology as well as letting the technology learn the language between human and nature.
Thiemer is currently focusing on installations that investigate spatiality and converse with its surroundings, looking to remediate the unknown into another media space in order to reposition it in new ways, opening up to new perception.
Projection installation for a Bjørn Svin concert (2019)
by the VJ-team at Engelsholm Folk High School, Spring ’19
Bjørn Svin held a performance in May 2019 at Engelsholm Folk High School. The VJ-team created an installation for the occasion in the shape of two cubes consisting of metal frames, stacked with an offset on top of each other, clad with tulle fabric. It was then projected onto via four projectors. Bjørn Svin held the performance in the middle of the cube and the audience could watch him through the visuals
Hardware: Computer, metal frame kit, tulle fabric, projectors.
Software: VDMX.
VIDEO
LED Poles for a club night with DJ Hvad and Grammar of Movement (2019)
by Ric Raphael Nitsch, Jesper Thiemer
The setup consisted of 6 standing DIY LED-poles, and was controlled live via Madmapper and a MIDI-controller during DJ sets from DJ Hvad and Grammar of Movements
The concert took place at 1000fryd, Aalborg, December 2019.
DIY wooden feet were made to make the LED-poles stand up.
Hardware: LED-controller, MIDI-controller, LED-poles in aluminium, wooden feet, paint.
Software: Madmapper.
VIDEO
Sound-Space Contrast Speaker (2019)
by Ric Raphael Nitsch, Lucas Arngrimson, Jesper Thiemer
Sound-Space Contrast Speaker is a piece created on 1st semester at Art & Technology. It was exhibited at Art & Technology’s fall exhibition in November 2019.
The aesthetic of the piece draws inspiration from the cybernetic aesthetic, e.g. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s precybernetic piece Light Space Modulator (1930), but instead this piece focuses on the spatiality of sound instead of light.
The sculpture itself consists of two speakers and is otherwise made of wood clad with black chiffon fabric.
One of the speakers is a parametric speaker with ultra small soundwidth, and it is mounted on a pan-tilt-head, whereas the direction of the sound can be panned around the room.
The other speaker is a conventional speaker pointing straight down to create a contrast to the parametric speaker.
For the exhibition there was a stand with plates of different material which the viewer could take and bring into the room to explore and control the reflection of sound.
Two experimental sound performances were also done on the sculpture which explored the effect of the sculpture in a performative role.
Hardware: Macbook, soundcard, Arduino, parametric speaker, conventional speaker entity, amplifier, stepper motors, wood, fabric, 3D-printed plastic
Software: Arduino, Max4live/Max MSP, Ableton Live, Madmapper
VIDEO
box.Auditus (2020)
by Astrid Graungaard, August Enghoff, Matias Gaarde, Jesper Thiemer
The piece was created on 3rd semester at Art & Technology.
It was exhibited at Art & Technology’s Fall Exhibition in November 2020.
box.Auditus consists of a big black box which the participant can step into as a room in itself.
The box consists of battens, which are covered with black velour fabric. Inside the box, a projector shoots a picture up on the wall opposite to the entrance to the room. Here the participant can see themself being tracked by a Kinect camera from above, where they are represented via a green dot that moves within a field of 64 fields (8×8 grid). Each of the eight fields on the x-axis has a synthetic sound texture, where the participant hears one of the eight sounds, depending on which field they’re in. If the participant moves back and forth (the Y-axis) in the room, they can control the volume of the sounds.
The work was a research-oriented project that dealt with psychological priming. The participant was briefed – before entering the box – regarding a heatmap that the participant would see on the screen in the form of red boxes of varying intensity. This was the activity of former participants in the room where the longer they stood on a field, the more red it became. Some participants were told, respectively, that previous participants liked these locations in space the best, while others
participants were told that the previous participants liked these placements the least. Participants were then debriefed and interviewed to know if the psychological priming worked.
The sound itself was played on a quadrophonic speaker setup – one speaker in each corner outside the box
Hardware: Macbook, soundcard, four speakers, Kinect-camera, short-throw projector, wood, fabric.
Software: Processing, Ableton Live.
VIDEO
Anyone There? (2021)
by Ask Fogsgaard, August Enghoff, Jesper Thiemer
The piece was created in the 4th semester at Art & Technology.
It was exhibited for Art & Technology’s spring exhibition in May 2021.
This work was exhibited outdoors and consisted of wood scraps that were already in the workshop.
The work consists of two stations with LEDs, a buzzer and a button for each. These two stations are connected via cable and two people can communicate via these two stations.
The two stations are placed with a distance of 8 meters, in order to make ordinary conversation difficult and to inspire spectators to communicate in another way to succeed with the work – here they can possibly shout at each other or use body language.
Each station has one button and three LEDs – two red and one green. The button is designed as a telegraph, putting thoughts towards the era of the telegraph, where it was relatively new to communicate remotely in real time.
There is no instruction in using the installation. It is up to the viewers to figure out how to do.
If each station gets the button pressed at the same time, one LED will light up. If both stations press down simultaneously again without error, the next LED will light up. If pressed a third time at the same time, all three LEDs will flash to signal that the interaction between the participants is successful, and a note will then be printed out at each station giving an overview of the interaction between the two stations. On the note, it is possible to see when one and the other participant have pressed their button, respectively, and whether they have both pressed, or just one of them has.
Hardware: Arduino, Computer, wood MDF-plates, LEDs, paint
Software: Processing
VIDEO
Impression (2021)
by Matias Gaarde, Jesper Thiemer
This is a piece that was exhibited at Mølleparken, Aarhus as part of the P224 exhibition ‘Celsius’
The piece was created with inspiration from the monoliths from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. These two monoliths made of wooden frame, clad with black satin fabric, were equipped inside with a hanging microphone each, as well as a metal plate with a transducer attached onto it. The metal plate was suspended by being hung with cords as to keep it unaffected by vibrations other than from the transducer screwed onto it.
The two monoliths refer to being entities made of unknown technology, which is amplified by the black color and minimalistic shape, as well as their interplay in size, one being 2,4m and the other being 1,2m. We experimented with thoughts on personification when introducing them to visitors.
Both monoliths had the same 12 predefined sounds – a starting language of sorts. They both listened to the ambience through each their microphone, being able to record a few seconds of the ambience from the park into their bank of 12 slots.
When touched sufficiently on the plate on their front which was equipped with piezo disks, they responded to the interaction by playing one of the 12 predefined sounds. Simultaneously they then recorded their surroundings and stored them in one of the 12 slots.
When left alone for a while, the two monoliths seemed to communicate to each other by taking turns playing a sound in one of their slots, learning the language of the environment around them.
As the day progressed, the slots in their soundbanks were overwritten with new sounds, thus adapting to the language around them, learning new phrases throughout the span of 8 hours.
No recordings were saved.
Hardware: Computer, reused wooden battens, black satin fabric, reused metal plates, transducers, amplifier, Arduino
Software: PureData
VIDEO
More pictures, info and event can be found on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/2638959522894614?post_id=2720721851385047
SPIRIT (Aalborg Opera Festival) (2021)
by Alberte Spork, Anton Thorbøll, Jesper Thiemer
For Aalborg Opera Festival, we were commissioned to make an installatory experience at the legendary Aalborg Spirit Destillery for the guests to see before they went in to hear the opera concert.
The task was to create an installation around the word ‘spirit’, leading us to work with spirit as alcohol, as well as something flowing like water.
Water then became our topic, creating a spatial animation intended for projection mapping on the structural posts in one of the rooms at the spirit destillery, or ‘Spritten’ in Danish. The structural posts created three ‘gates’ on which an animated water blob wandered around, being a part of a projected narrative in which the blob suddenly explodes, filling the posts with water, with flowing particle systems appearing over the course of a few minutes. For the ending, the posts suddenly crack, letting the water rip out of the posts, leaving them empty again and a new blob appears.
Meanwhile a soundscape designed by me is accompanying the installation, adding sound effects to the events that are projected.
The whole installation lasted exactly 4 minutes, in a loop.
Hardware: Computer, projector, speakers
Software: Madmapper, Blender, Processing
VIDEO
Article: ‘SPIRIT’ at the Aalborg Opera Festival (2021):
https://www.appetize.dk/anmeldelse-aalborg-operafestivals-aabningskoncert/
Expression (BA project, May 2022 – Kunsthal Nord)
by Jesper Thiemer
Expression is a work made as my bachelor project from Art & Technology, and was part of the spring exhibition that took place at Kunsthal Nord in May 2022. Expression is a work of media technology that unfolds in multi-speaker sound and LED lighting. The work explores audiovisual media and investigates the relationship between sound and light, as well as the acousmatic, the concrete, as well as the ambient. The work also draws on the tension between the experienced and the lived, which is ultimately expressed by a self-fulfilling media work. The work also converses with and extends the history of media art within sound and light. The work consists of an audiovisual installation with a quadrophonic sound setup with four speakers placed in each corner of a room that you can enter, as well as four LED light bars, where an approx. 4 minute composition for both light and sound is played, where the tempo depends on your pulse, when you put your finger on a pulse sensor
Supervised by lecturer and curator, Morten Søndergaard
Hardware: 4 Dynaudio speakers, 4 self-built LED bars with controller from Vertigo, metal frame, heart rate monitor, MacBook
Software: Ableton Live, Max, Madmapper, Arduino
VIDEO
Visuals for Roskilde Festival (June 2022)
by Jesper Thiemer, commissioned by Engelsholm Folk High School & Roskilde Festival
PICTURES AND DESCRIPTION COMING SOON
Impression v.2 (July 2022 – Undergrowth Festival)
by Jesper Thiemer
My sculptural sound installation was recreated for the Undergrowth festival at 1000fryd, Aalborg as a version 2 with a new sculptural form, placed in a new environment, and the two sculptures therefore captured new sounds in a new environment. This time indoors.
Hardware: Computer, reused wooden battens, black satin fabric, reused metal plates, transducers, amplifier, Arduino
Software: PureData
More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/361120726058894? post_id=390833469754286&view=permalink
Eksperimentarium for Fremtidens Hjem (July 2022 – SAMHØR)
By Bjørg Dyg Nielsen, Jesper Thiemer
English: Experimentarium for a future home
Experimentarium for Fremtidens Hjem is an exhibition from Samhør, where I took on the role of sound artist, for which I decided to create a four-channel sound work that comments on the theme of the exhibition – namely the home of the future, and how it can/could sound when you live in a home in the future. The sound work consisted of four rooms: Bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen, where in each room you could hear life and sounds associated with these rooms simultaneously to give the feeling of living in an apartment with eventual roommates. The visual artist, Bjørg Dyg Nielsen, made two tiny houses out of wood, which were placed respectively at the Institut for X and Kh7artspace in Aarhus. In these two houses I placed 4 transducers and electronics to play a 1.5 hour sound piece in a loop. Hardware: transducers, amplifiers, raspberry pi Software: Puredata
More info: https://kunsten.nu/artguide/calendar/samhoer-eksperimentarium-for-fremtidens-hjem/
Dome of Belief Synthesis (August 2022 – Aalborg Opera Festival)
by Ulrik Vincent, Jesper Thiemer
Dome of Belief Synthesis is a temporary audiovisual installation made for Aalborg Opera Festival in Vor Frelsers Kirke, Aalborg. The installation consisted of a dome made of 16 speakers and 360 degrees visuals accompanying a 10 minute sound composition. The dome consisting of 16 speakers plays a composition based on spoken texts about different religions and belief and are then intertwined within each other. The observers are standing inside the dome to experience the sound composition and at the same time they experience abstract monochromatic visuals accompanying the mood of the whole composition.
More info: https://www.aalborgopera.dk/kalender/dome-of-beliefs-2022/
VIDEO: