Along the wooden corridor of Højskole Snoghøj, across the old railway bridge and through the little quiet woodpecker forest to Middelfart. Meeting with the setting sun on the way back.

There was a great idea that two students at Designskolen Kolding had. It was about a youth center instead of an abandoned drunk’s building right in the middle of Kolding. Alex and Mathilde worked hard and with help of other students managed to get the City Centeret, as it was called, up and running.

This month another part of the building was renovated as an art gallery where young folks could exhibit. In the last days before opening, i joined in and helped with a lot of paint-work and scrubbing glued stuff from the floor. We took out all the trash, the alcohol, the broken glass. We got the building cleaned and set up for the opening, we hung paintings, sculptures, installations and photo series. The Center Galleriet was opened on Wednesday. Alex even managed to get some wine and marshmallows with grapes from sponsors. Everybody came, even the television. Mathilde and Alex were shining (:

Today in the morning, the place was burned. It looks like someone set it on fire, but we’re still waiting for the final report from the firemen. The police closed and sealed the place until the next year, when the Kolding Kommune was planing to demolish it anyway (and build a big shinny shopping center). Although we all knew that the place is not going to last forever, we still looked in shock at almost half of year’s work and the black smoke colored windows of the idea choked in just couple of minutes.

We are working with robots in health and welfare at DSKD for the next two months. This week was a research week. Our group focused on the old and disabled people and I decided to go on the wheelchair for the whole day. Not just stay at school or drive around hospital - that’s easy, but go on the bus, get some cash from the ATM machine, go in the supermarket, get to my apartment up the hill. I know it’s still nothing compared to years or the whole life some people have to spend with it, but at least now I know a little about how it’s like.

I kept notes and a graph of my physical and psychological state for the research purposes. I am 23 and by the end of the day my hands were shaking from all the pain in the muscles (remember that, when you get old you loose 50% of body strength).

I didn’t cheat, I even went to the opening of the Center Galleriet, where I also exhibited my photo-series K-Block, on the wheelchair.

I never thought that just moving around would be that hard. All the pavements that are bent so you strain only one hand at the time, the bumps, the mini ramps at the crossroads, elevators, getting on the ramps, which are often in the back of the building …
It’s funny how the people that can walk the least often have to take the longest route.

And then there is all the little things that define the way you think about your environment; like plugging the computer into the corner plug for the electricity, getting coffee (how do you hold it?), talking to people - you can’t just wave to the friend at the other side of the canteen because you’re not high enough and it takes you more time to get to him because of all the tables and the chairs blocking your way and finally everybody is looking down on you. And even though you know and they know this is an experiment, you subconsciously still feel stressed of being looked down on.

What it started out as a fun research day ended in me being very very exhausted and wanting to go to bed badly by the end of the day. It took me almost 40 minutes to get to my apartment (which is 7 minutes walk from school) and at the very end I just had to cheat, because I really wanted to get to my room on the second floor but the elevator is locked and the real-estate agency at the other side of the city has the key.

There are less and less birds in our lives. We have build ourselves impenetrable concrete fortresses with sounds of halogen lights and robot coffee machines echoing through the halls and rooms of our days. When i think of birds, i think of an open space full of air and freshness. I think of being free to relax without stress somewhere outside the gray fortress.

Sometime in December i decided to create an interactive sound space installation to try bringing back a little of that atmosphere into our everyday shared spaces such as halls and corridors. I have now well set foot into the project, a part of which has also become my “diploma” project at NTF in Ljubljana.

Most of the research part on sound in space, birds and their behavior, field recording, digital audio, etc. is now done and i’ve already made some of the first stereo sketches and environmental recordings (you can listen to the edited mix above). I have not yet decided on how exactly you interact with it - whether you only trigger bird sounds flying around or whether you also change parts of the sound-scape with your presence. But i guess that will be a matter of more focused experimenting and probing.

I wanted to play just with sound as a media, because i think it is the added quality of space which we many times perceive only subconsciously. And i believe, if i can somehow affect at least the smallest and most hidden part of the our brain and fill it with openness and freedom of birds, then i did something for making somebody’s day a little nicer.

A spacial sound installation that takes you back in time through the mechanism of delayed voices.