Ultima-current composer Tine Surel Lange is concerned with the visual frameworks surrounding music. “Context is important to me. I often say that I am a contextualist.
/ 12/07/2019 / Kristian DugstadPhoto from the Desert Creatures Salton Sea project
Name: Tine Surel Lange
Age: 29
Current with: Works for Listening
TONO member since: I don't remember, but I was at KODA for a few years, but have been well-established at TONO for a few years now.
Who is Tine Surel Lange?
I am a composer and artist based in Lofoten. Based on sound, I create works that take the form of instrumental and electroacoustic composition, audiovisual works and installations, and performance.
What does it mean to beæAre you a composer today?
What a composer is and does becomes broader as the possibilities, tools and expressions also become broader. But I would say that most composers work with the systematization of sound and sound expressions.
What is your musical background?
I come from a classical music family and have been through a lot of instruments before I realized that it was the sound itself, and not what specifically created the sound, that was my fascination. Educationally, I have zigzagd my way through studies in early music at the Copenhagen Conservatory and privately with Paolo Pandolfo, as well as studies in sound design and sound art at Sonic College in Denmark. I ended up in composition at NMH, where I have studied bachelor and master, with a semester of ambisonics at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Lithuania as a spice.
What inspires your works?
Sound and listening are at the core of my work. I am strongly inspired by the surrounding world, both the elements it consists of (audio and video recordings) and the things that happen in it (themes). In recent years, my works have taken a political turn, as I experience sound as my voice through which I can illuminate current issues such as sex and body pressure, internet culture, loneliness, climate change and environmental disasters.
Where and how do you write?
I have a studio in Lofoten where all my equipment is kept together – including an 8-channel rig and several projectors. I really appreciate having a place where I can always go and work for several days and where I have everything I need for audio, video, construction and miscellaneous available. But since I travel more than I am at home, most of my works are created on the go – during residencies, work stays or on trips between A and B. I have therefore prioritized light and mobile equipment so that I can mostly be prepared for the different creative processes I may end up in.
I also work a lot with ambisonics, which is an immersive 3D sound technique, and my “Works for Listening”, which are all 5th order ambisonics works, are created and further developed in places that have facilities for this – which is not exactly the case in Northern Norway. The works have so far been created at Notam in Oslo, MISC in Vilnius, EMS in Stockholm and most recently at CCRMA at Stanford University in California. Working with ambisonics is very rewarding for me, as I experience that here I can create a type of work without limitations – I tend to call ambisonics the electroacoustic composer’s symphony orchestra – and approach my material in a completely new and more comprehensive way. I thrive incredibly well in an ambisonics studio where I can explore what is possible with the type of material I work with, and I greatly appreciate the work stays I have and will be taking in connection with this work.
What is that?øWhat is the best music you ever wrote?
I have been fascinated by sound for as long as I can remember, and have written things down ever since I learned sheet music at the age of 6-7. I started composing seriously at 14-15, where I had a string quartet that liked to test out my experiments. I first started with electronic sound at 20 – like a world that opened up to me at express speed – and very appropriately my first electroacoustic work was called “Awakening”.
You are known for audiovisual works, installations and performance, among other things. How can this contribute to the music?
My practice is deeply rooted in listening. The framework in which sound is presented will always be colored to a greater or lesser extent by the environment in which it is presented, and therefore it has become natural for me to also want to control or create the visual framework in which sound is presented. Context is important to me, and this shapes both the sound and any visual elements that I feel must be part of the work. I often say that I am a contextualist. I am constantly exploring what sound and music can express, and constantly trying to challenge myself to constant development. Especially video projection, body and performative elements, something that is repeated in my works at the moment.
During Ultima 2019 in September, you are relevant «Desert Creatures II». The work is part of your project «Arctic Creatures»Tell me about it?
This is a series of works that plays with the idea that evolution has run its course and a new species has emerged that lives off everything we cannot live off. The first work in the series “Arctic Creatures” takes place in Repparfjord where the creatures have heard about the upcoming mining operation that is to resume (on a much larger scale than before) and are in the area looking for potential spawning grounds. The work consists of video material of the creatures (body in a flesh-colored one-piece suit with long intestine-like objects from where we would have eyes) and a dark and dystopian sound material. The work was performed by MolOt Ensemble in Oslo and St. Petersburg this spring in a version for video and ensemble.
“Desert Creatures” is the second work in the series and will be for video and ambisonics. The work was filmed in the desert in southern California around the Salton Sea where the creatures have begun to build nests. The Salton Sea was created by mistake by humans at the beginning of the 1900th century. The lake eventually developed into the ultimate American dream in the form of a resort town that attracted investors and more visitors than Yosemite National Park – but the dream was shattered and the area is now one of the most unhealthy places in the United States, where car wrecks, ruins and empty streets of cities that never came to be remain. With no other supply than excess residual water and waste from surrounding agriculture, the lake is dying with a salt content twice as high as the Pacific Ocean. The water is brown and stinks of rotten eggs as a result of several million dead fish and other organic material. The beach consists of partially pulverized fish bones. Toxic dust from the shore spreads to the surrounding settlements where most of the population has serious respiratory problems and has neither the means nor the opportunity to move away.
The video footage of the creatures in the Salton Sea (filmed in 49 degrees and with an intense smell of rotten eggs) is fantastic and scary, and some of the worst I have ever exposed my own body to. For this video footage I will create an electroacoustic soundtrack – based, among other things, on the sound of footsteps on the beach of dead fish bones. The work will be presented with sound and video in an ambisonics sphere at the Ultima festival in collaboration with the Ulysses network – and supported by the Composers' Fund.
You are concerned aboutåtime environmentøchallenges. What can music contribute?
Just as the same sentence in different languages will have the same meaning, it will still be able to reach far more people if it is communicated in multiple languages, so I believe it is important to highlight issues with as many expressions as possible – with words, images, video, sound, music, etc.
Is there anything during Ultima that you are looking forward to experiencing?
Ultima is an exciting and broad festival where the greatest experiences are a mix of what I know and expect to be good, and what I don't know and am completely surprised by is good. So I will try to take in as much as possible during the days I am there. I am still especially looking forward to the concert with Canadian Arcitek Percussion who will bring an exciting and varied program!
In 2019 you also haveto have been nominated for TONO's EDVARD award. What does that mean to you?
It is not easy to be a composer, even though we have far better conditions in Norway than in most other countries, and it is always incredibly nice to be appreciated for the work you do. There is an exciting environment in Norway for electroacoustic composition that I feel can be overshadowed by the strong tradition of instrumental composition that we have, and I therefore appreciate the fact that these works have led to a nomination for this year's EDVARD prize.
What are you working on?åWhat brings høstone?
I have just finished an extremely demanding installation and performance project “All Women Are Dirty Whores” at the Festival of Northern Norway, which addresses sexism, shaming and internet culture, and am currently editing documentation material from this. In addition to further work with “Arctic Creatures” and “Desert Creatures”, I am working on a new work based on the Telemark Canal that will be presented at the Greenlight District festival in Skien in September. I am continuously working on my “Works for Listening” which will be presented in China in the fall, among other places, so I am looking forward to that. But before all this, I am going to Finland for a month in August for the residency and exhibition project “Sea Views”.
What is career high?the extreme point so far?
It's hard to choose one point, as I'm so grateful for all the exciting opportunities I've been given, but since I had a college crush on Stanford University my entire childhood and loudly proclaimed to everyone that I would study marine biology there when I grew up, it was extra big for me to be invited to CCRMA at Stanford University to perform my entire “Works for Listening” series in a 56.8 speaker sphere a few weeks ago.
Can you share your story?First music experience – as a listener?
There have often been experiences where multiple senses have been at work – audiovisual or performative productions where sound has been the focus. Or when nature gives its all in an intense hailstorm – it is probably the most intense listening experience I have ever had.
I am incredibly fascinated when a performer, regardless of genre, manages to move people to a degree beyond the ordinary.