Musician, composer, and ceramist Jørgen Frederik Scheel Haarstad transforms cast-off art to audio-visual performances. Together with proper tools, he plays with his music. This show of Haarstad’s functionality extends a flavor of his manifestations of music.
We are apt to associate porcelain with crockery, figurines, and vases. But not Jørgen Frederik Scheel Haarstad. The artist seemed to some ceramic form that is equally as widespread and valuable as homeware in our everyday lives. However, something much less observable: the electric insulator.
Perched on a high-energy line over our heads hidden from a dim fuse box, that the insulator is a type of abstract minimalist design. Even so, appreciated because of its immunity, water-tightness, and durability.
Compared to plastics, ceramic insulators understand few competitions because the substance outperforms others. And the somewhat faulty “rejects” are not likely to locate a house. Unless they have been created in Fredrikstad in the national ceramic mill Norsk Teknisk Porselen. In which Haarstad collects both faulty and split insulators in white and black. He places these large scale sculptures in bigger installations, which might be harmful. It may not be for any electric current, but because of its deadly sharpness of their shards.
Again, compared to homeware, the insulators have to be dealt with more caution and care when they’re broken than when they’re undamaged. Works like Lethal Assumption — white shards, packed together, such as the incisors of a T-Rex’s mouth manage to unite shattered fragility with deadly menace.
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Such installments may be seen as industrial readymades. Yet, Haarstad is also a professional artist and composer who chose to style his own musical instruments in ceramic. This includes pipes, smaller pellet-like contours, and even porcelain tiles. Visit https://www.sigmatilecutter.com/best-porcelain-tile-cutter/ for the best porcelain tile cutters.
He plays with these exceptional instruments in unconventional manners. Hitting with drumsticks or together along with other demanding parts of ceramic. As well as allowing them to crash into the ground.
The noise made with a large ceramic tile may last up to 45 minutes and ranges by 9 Hz to 17,000 Hz (human hearing rests approximately 20 Hz). The artist-musician employs a rythm to change these sounds into a makeup which changes eerily from audio to silence. The interpretation of music depends to the person hearing it. Together with his unconventional ceramic solid functions, Haarstad multiplies the applications of industrial substances while rejecting their original destinations.
His oeuvre — artworks, musical instruments, compositions, performances — blurs the division between those domain names. By making music which may escape individual perception, he challenges the notion that songs needs to be made for human beings, but also queries the anthropocentrism of arts.