Biosphere: The Red Folks

Biosphere: The Red Folks from Geir Jenssen / Biosphere on Vimeo.

An experiment using a «sonification scanner» on rock carvings from the Bronze Age [1800 –500 B.C.].

Outdoor audio and video installations on a Bronze Age site just outside Stavanger.
3-12. October 2008, Austre Åmøy, Stavanger, Norway

One of the main mottos of Stavanger2008 is openness. It is just such openness to external impulses that is reflected in the Bronze Age discoveries.
There was lively contact across large parts of Europe and the neighbouring areas to the South and East.

The Bronze Age is one of the few pre-historic periods from which a wealth of pictorial material remains.
This is perhaps best expressed in the rock carvings that still form a part of our landscape.
The rock carvings were ritual meeting places. Today they can also be regarded as art.

The people of the Bronze Age expressed their world of ideas through these carvings.
 Today, too, the rock carvings are surrounded by a certain mystic aura,
even though meticulous research has decoded some of the 3000-year-old messages.

Through the project Markers in the Landscape, Rogaland County Council gives contemporary artists
the opportunity to create commissioned work/installations inspired by our knowledge of the world of ideas and
artistic effects of the Bronze Age. The idea is to exhibit these works by the original 3000-year-old sites to give
 the audience an experience of the monuments that cannot be expressed in words. With the new, but authentically-based,
experience by the original sites, the project seeks to open the minds of the spectators to this strange and distant past.

The production company Nuproductions has been engaged as a partner on the production side.
Geir Jenssen – better known as Biosphere – has also been invited to participate.
Geir Jenssen is a leading composer and musician within the electronic music genre and has experience of similar projects.
Light installations are also being planned in addition to the sound background.

The island of Austre Åmøy has been chosen as arena for the installation.
 Here, the rock carvings can be seen in more or less their original environment, without much modern interference.