Something about the realities we share
and the realities we don't 

Lundahl & Seitl / Pia Léon Eikaas

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Tail of the Hen series, 2021
Lundahl & Seitl

Voice 172 hertz
Xylem 85 kilohertz
Ultraviolet 843 terahertz

The Tail of the Hen series will be shown at Celsius Projects throughout the exhibition ‘Something about the realities we share and the realities we don’t’

Before visiting Celsius Projects gallery, make an appointment. RSVP to: celsiusprojectsrsvp@gmail.com

In advance of your time slot invite a friend, anywhere in the world, to meet you virtually at the Gallery.

Bring your own headphones and phone

Download the app here:
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The first part of the Tail of the Hen series, 2021, presented at Celsius Projects, studies the paradox of intimacy and presence taking place between two people who are physically separated by space. Dealing with individual, societal and ecological change in different stages, of which the covid pandemic is one component, the series explores the promise of virtual presence & reciprocity in proximity to technology, non-human life, objects, places and environments.

In the first part of the series, we are searching for the occurrence of felt human presence, experienced at a distance and mediated through the human voice. Like dark matter in physics, this felt presence and intimacy cannot be proven, grasped, nor directly studied. Paradoxically, scientists descend into underground labs far away from the sun in order to study stars. Likewise, we are studying the paradox of intimacy and presence potentially taking place between two people physically separated by space, each looking out through different windows, out of different perspectives on the world.

The artwork uses phone technology in a radically different way. With your own voice as a vehicle, you will descend through the ground. What you’ll experience depends on where you’re located, and what landscape or built structures are hiding below you.

Focusing on that which is so close to us that we do not perceive it, such as our own voice and the ability of our mind to imagine a different reality than that which is before our senses, this piece focuses on the ability of two friends or strangers to follow their voices, depart from their anthropocentric bunkers, pass the infrastructure that facilitates their virtual existence via fibre optic communication channels and sewage systems, to meet finally in the echoes of a cave.


Credits
Tail of the Hen series, 2021 Lundahl & Seitl
Rachel Alexander - Collaborator and Dramaturgy
DVA - Creative Technology partner / Head Developer Micke Ring
Hara Alonso - Sound Composer
Emma Ward - Producer

Lundahl & Seitl are supported by The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and the International Program for Visual Artists (iaspis), Stockholm Stad and Kulturrådet Sweden / Swedish Arts Council.  

Image: Boulby Underground Laboratory

Boulby Underground Laboratory (UK) With 1,100m of rock in between the ground it makes an ideal site to study dark matter using ultra-sensitive detectors and ultra-low radiation techniques, to try to catch the faint breath of a particle wind, sent blowing across space from a distant constellation: The Swan. This constellation contains Deneb which is derived from the Arabic word for "tail", from the phrase ذيل الدجاجة Dhanab al-Dajājah, or "tail of the hen", hence the title of the series, in which Voice 172 Hertz is the first part. In the Transmission from the Tail of the Hen series we are searching for the occurrence of felt human presence, experienced at a distance and mediated through the human voice. Like dark matter (in physics), this felt presence and intimacy cannot be proven, grasped nor directly studied. The paradox of scientists descending underground far away from the sun in order to study the stars, resembles the attempt to understand the intimacy and presence between two people physically separated by space, each looking out through different windows / perspectives onto the world.

Conjunction: Tail of the Hen - STRP Festival and Streaming Museum NY

Saturday 5th of June at 9pm (CET)

In conjunction with Tail of the Hen’s showing at STRP Festival and Streaming Museum NY there is an international event where visitors can enter the artwork from home to be randomly paired up with someone on earth, or indeed, in space: if you’re lucky you’ll connect with one of the astronauts at the International Space Station

Unknown Cloud Forming – a participatory AR performance by Lundahl & Seitl and Untold Garden


An Unknown Cloud Forming in Malmö, 2021 by Lundahl & Seitl and Untold Garden

In collaboration with Rachel Alexander and Hara Alonso, Producer Emma Ward

Programmed to evolve globally until 2057 as both a myth and a real, live phenomenon, the Unknown Cloud has appeared over large cities, remote villages, across national borders and international sea space.
Unknown Cloud Forming synchronizes the movement of bodies near and far, by bringing people together within a limited time window, often at dusk. With a free App downloaded on their phones, Cloud followers are directed to gather in local flash-mobs on a square, a green area in the city, on top of a hill or in the forest, whereupon they make a collective effort to draw both each other and the Cloud towards them. As soon as the experience starts, their devices cease to be smartphones. The screens go black and they gradually transition from an individual into a collective experience. The smartphone becomes a bi-directional sensory extension to the body – a wand or a sacred object that enables you to experience the otherwise intangible world of the unknown cloud.
Preceded by a rumor to act as an amplifier of one’s senses, the Cloud has an ability to create a portal between the life worlds of human, non-human, geological entities and life forms.
Faced with the contradiction; to imagine something that is already there, but cannot be perceived with their senses, Cloud followers are drawn into an interdependent collaboration to form the cloud. Like a superorganism spread out beyond the borders of their own body, they begin to listen with their hands, hear from the position of another person’s body.. They are nudged into forming larger constellation of bodies to be used as an amplifier to collectively hear traces of our civilisation: radio communication floating through the air, and the invisible communication signals from the mycelium web, the last surviving non-human creature on Earth, underground. By placing your “sensor’’onto your own and (at distance) other bodies to listen for their murmur, you encounter the universe’s own fossils: neutrinos. Neutrinos carry fossilized messages from the universe’s remote past: the radio astronomical sound of the sun, the background radiation of the beginning.
Like the dynamic structure of glacial ice; the deeper you look or listen, the deeper you travel into the cloud, and the further back into the Earth’s geological past you reach. Ice has been consistent in its technology over millions of years. Ice has a memory: trapped air gets squeezed into tiny bubbles, each a record of the atmosphere, each data, collected and kept for millennia. When, as a group, you collaborate to attract the cloud, you become able to collectively pass through the memory of the Earth’s deep past. Some memories will remain as fossils and others will evaporate forever into air, in parallel with the ongoing melting of glaciers globally. When encountering a cloud event it remains uncertain if the cloud is a ritual to generate change or a contemporary ritual of burial. The appearance of the cloud changes the acoustic reverb in the visitors’ headphones. Like a glacier, the cloud appears to have a climate of its own. The light from smartphone screens colour the haze blue, like aged ice, as an interlude to the impending time compression, the cold memory of the earth.
As a measure to prevent the spread of C-19 we have built in a safe distance within the artwork.When people come closer than 1.5 – 2 m to each other, there is a feedback disturbance in their headphones which prompts them to move apart. A focus in the experience is how to establish a connection and presence with each other from a distance.

Credits:
Unknown Cloud Forming 2015 – 2057
Lundahl & Seitl and Untold Garden (Jakob Skote and Max Celar) in collaboration with Rachel Alexander and Hara Alonso
Producer Emma Ward, Photo: Sarlongkiri Ingti (Lee Eh Kiri)

Earlier iterations of the Unknown Cloud were commissioned and co-produced by Berliner Festspiele Immersion (DE) & Accelerator (S)

Lundahl & Seitl are supported by The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and the International Program for Visual Artists (iaspis), Stockholm Stad and Kulturrådet Sweden / Swedish Arts Council. 


Photo: Sarlongkiri Ingti (Lee Eh Kiri)

‘Something about the realities we share and the realities we don’t’
was made possible with generous support from: