In june 2017 we shipped 7 large crates full of equipment to Iceland to install award winning performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s latest exhibition ‘God, I Feel So Bad’, in his hometown of Reykjavik. Due to this being his first exhibition in Iceland, selected works dating from 2004 to the present have been chosen, to take over the whole of the Reykjavík Art Museum. There will be plenty for the audience to enjoy as the exhibition includes music, theater, film, literature and visual arts.
ArtAV supplied and installed all of Ragnar’s Audio Visual pieces; World of Light – The Life and Death of an Artist (2015), A lot of Sorrow (2013) and Scenes from Western Culture (2015).
Scenes from Western Culture is a 9 channel installation shown on 9 LED TV screens of varied size, showing different aspects of western culture and their first world lives, luxuries, and problems. The media playback system used was one of ArtAV’s custom 9 channel HyperDeck playback racks. Each stereo channel of audio had its own dynamics including EQ, compressor and limiter giving ultimate control of the audio. To supplement the speakers in the screens we provided 9 JVC TH-W513B Soundbars to reinforce the audio, mounted behind each screen.
World Light – The Life and Death of an Artist is a 4 channel video installation showing over twenty hours of footage on the creation of the ‘ultimate art piece’. Ragnar’s take on World light, written by icelandic author Halldór Laxness, covers the full creation of the performance, from outtakes to being behind the scenes. ArtAV used Christie DHD600 DLP single chip full HD projectors, rear projected onto four of our custom built, 4.3 metre screens. HyperDeck Studio Pro media players, alongside our own Hypersync, were used to control playback. World Light uses 12 channels of audio that we needed to be able to control and reproduce at the best possible quality. Audio processing was handled by a Xilica Neutrino, which provided full audio DSP and network control. JBL LSR4328P speakers were flown from the ceiling of the space using ArtAV’s custom flown speaker plates. These plates allow precise positioning of speakers including full pan and tilt of the speaker using a simple and unobtrusive 3 wire system that fixes to the ceiling with a single fixing.
A Lot of Sorrow, is over 6 hours long in which The National, an american indie rock band, play their song Sorrow over and over again. Matt Berninger describes its aim as “reaching a different sort of euphoric, mantra-like state.” A Lot of Sorrow is a single channel installation consisting of a 5m projected image with stereo and sub audio. To provide excellent clarity of projection ArtAV provided a Barco W8 3 DLP 8000 lumen projector that provides a rich and vibrant image. Audio was handled by a Behringer DEQ2496, a pair of QSC K8s and a QSC sub all as requested by Ragnar’s install supervisor. The QSC system provided a gutsy sound that suited the Rock and Roll feel of the piece.
