+ See also rojal.se (publishing house run by me and Joel Nordqvist)
2010-2024
“The storage space in the attic carries traces and marks of previous tenants – a cross hanging from a beam in the ceiling, paint stains on the floor and a pair of old skis, at some point left behind – the door adorned with numbers and a padlock, protecting against intrusion and baring witness of an owner.” “There is no more space and a cleaning is necessary to make room for new things. Most of it has been packed in brown boxes and bags, of which I no longer remember the contents. Squeezed in between the boxes and the bags are items still waiting to be organised. Ending up here are the things that were rejected or that belong to another time, hidden away but none the less a part of my story and my life, a collection – a spare saucepan, a tennis racket for future matches, chairs awaiting guests. A remarkable number of the objects have never been used, and will eventually be replaced or thrown away.” Winner of Swedish Photobook Award (Lilla fotobokspriset, for small edition) 2024 |
The Eaten Books + AInsects The insect is moving over book pages, eating its way through the book, page by page in a slow animation. When the whole book has been eaten the insect moves on to the next. Thus a selection of books, important to our culture and civilisation, is disintegrated as the insects erase the lines through their movements. In the end, all that is left are small fragments of text and the traces of the insect’s movements. The animation keeps going for half a year, after which the consumed pages are printed and bound into a library of erased books with little else than the titles remaining. Ainsects A book from the 18th century with the title Atlas de Insectes containing detailed illustration of insects. As the book is scanned the illustrations on the opposite side of the page shine through the paper. Exibitionds: Kristiansand Kunsthall, Skövde Art Museum, Gothenburg City Library An article for Philosophy of photography describing the project:
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Tides 43200 seconds, tap water and cut out pages from a book about the journey to the moon. |
Shadow Play for computers / The Computer As Seen at the End of the Human Age 2022 The project is part of the book The Computer As Seen at the End of the Human Age. I was editor for the book and it was an experimental book written by computers. read more: www.rojal.se Shadows of computer parts: resistors, fuses, fans, camera components, therm- istors, led lights, integrated circuits, varicap diodes and broken switches. Ob- jects that when assembled into different combinations form electronic devices and computers. These objects are part of our lives. We carry them around, but rarely notice them or attribute any greater meaning to them. The objects in Shadowplay [for computers] derive from my everyday life, from my old dis- carded computers or other electronic devices. I catalogue the separate compo- nents, like someone trying to document their digital existence, or as a collector of insects. A projection in the snow, a shadowplay where the electronic objects are arranged to form a face. A game where the algorithm substitutes and recom- bines the objects overlapping each other, creating new forms and shadows. An eternal loop of technology and new faces for each copy of the book. The meth- od of obstructing light to create figures might be the oldest art form in the world. The use of thin sticks to conceal the presence of the puppet master heightens the illusion. In ancient times hearth flames on cave walls, today a flashlight or a projector, and in a distant future – when our societies and technologies have been buried and forgotten – shadow forms of these obsolete digital componen- tes, rediscovered and interpreted as windows to a lost digital world. The Animation below makes endless images that became pages for the book The Computer As Seen at the End of the Human Age. See pages of the book below or read more at www.rojal.se
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Utgallringen / The Deselection, 2021
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Tangenterna (The Keys) The ABC of the typewriter. A book on typing, finger positions, and learning how to type words: The meaning of the keys. The territory and composition of the little finger. The downward movement of the index finger, a “V”, and another centimeter to the right, a “G”. Exercises containing sentences and words emptied of their practical meaning, but still carefully selected for a specific purpose. Images of the secretary, illustrating how it is done, and personifying the activity. Words and sentences as a daydream or a dance, with hands moving in given patterns. He disassembles the book, separating images and text. A computer program types texts without using keys, 3 pages per second. The program creates fragments of text, maybe poems, maybe images becoming new books. For the cover page he uses the keys from an old computer, dislodging them with his fingers and gluing them onto the cardboard covers, one key for each book, as separate titles for books with unique contents.
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Flip books from the hidden corners of the Internet I'm looking for movies on Youtube with few or no visitors, webcams at eventless times. In most cases, I am the only visitor. Sometimes the filmmaker does not even know that the movie was uploaded, an incorrect button press. Movies that sometimes are there for a short while, disappear. Webcams from tourist resorts off season, construction sites, municipal webcams that monitor traffic or someone trying their new mobile phone.
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Georges Perec The Machine by Olle Essvik, Gibca Extendend (Gothenburg Bienalle, RepRecDigit Conference(Linköping)) Compture Software + Book Georges Perec The Machine by Olle Essvik |
Rorschach The images are beautiful in their own right, like abstract art created from ink stains, but their purpose is not esthetical. They belong to the so-called Rorschach test, a cognitive personality test in which the patient's interpretations of the images are used as a basis for a diagnosis. The test has been in use since the beginning of the 20th century, but in recent years its scientific credibility has been challenged. A couple of years after the find, Essvik is working with AI and starts playing around with the Rorschach images, analysing them through an AI trained on image recognition. During the exhibition period the AI’s interpretations of the images will change, and get increasingly advanced, as more images are fed into the system.
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Art&Game Obstruction, Skövde Art Museum "Act 1. Staging (rule) A long time ago there was no digital. It was something else. Many people from that time are dead. In a near future there will be no one left. The room is darkened and the sun is missing. Empty blue screens lighting up the room. Screens without content. A corridor filled with darkness. A fire camp with ice. A forgotten Internet cafe. Periscope mirroring the sky.The digital beginning. The time we hardly remember. A room without content. The emptiness. Act 2. The process and the final (obstruction) To be continued...
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For Years to Come (remake 2015) A calender for 100 years. A workshop where the participants created their own 100 years calenders. Download code to make a calender.
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The Enemies of Books
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Opløsning 1999-2017
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Soup of the day, 2015 |
The Last Supper A graveyard. A cooking program. A desert. Oil fields. Mourning march. A starry sky without an end. A lion tamer. Food that is transported in outer space. New recipes are written and new cooking instructions are recorded over and over again.
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