Telart artist Jørgen Larsson merging old an new communication technologies (and an unknown amount of coffe) at the Atelier Nord studio.

Anders and Jonas mounting the sound beam on a light pole by the pentagon.

The sound technology is developed in collaboration with Soundscape Studios.

Don’t forget to contribute your story on the Blue Wall of Silence website

construction of 10 hinged barrier units to be attached to main structure

Stone removed and chain-link fence mounted on inner pentagon.

Comments and questions received from passers-by: “Is it for birds?”, “It is certainly not art yet!”, “a new Guantanamo Bay?”, “Exciting!” , “Will it be a new kindergarten?”, “Cage for blacks?”, “Is this where the prayer for peace will take place?”, “Will there be a cock fight here?”

Wednesday morning we started to install on Vaterlandstorget in the center of Oslo. One of the pentagon’s 5 corners is pointing to the north .

Installation continued today. With 3 great helpers the wooden framework was up in no time.

Tuesday we moved the pentagon from the Nordic Artist’s Center in Dale on the west coast to Oslo. Elisabet, my dear friend and director of NKD drove the rented truck the 9 hours ride. We parked in front of the Munch museum and concluded the endeavor with some shots of Jack. 1000 takk to the people who helped in Dale: Svein Ove, Elisabet, Justina, Jakob, Ewa and Jarek, Gudrun, Maria, Michael, Agne, Even, Per Gunnar and Camilla.

The making of the walls: 15 (+1) panels, each 1m x 3 m. Water, flour, shredded paper and sunflower seeds.

Norways chief urbanist Erling Fossen is opening the urban interface | oslo exhibition. He has written several books on political philosophy i.e Marx in Cyberspace and EcstaCity, founded Oslo City Forum and InterCity that organised over 200 political bar meetings the last 6 years. He is currently employed at Oslo Teknopol.

The exhibition is opened at Sound of Mu Thursday 13th of September at 19:00.

Before summer started, I had a meeting with the municipalities in Gamle Oslo. I was happy to have arranged a meeting that early, and imagined having all the public sites confirmed before I had my rainy and cold vacation. Not so. I should have known that the districts are administrative units. Most of (but not all) of the green areas and the biggest squares are owned by Friluftsetaten, a separate municipal department. The light poles on and around the squares, however, is owned by a private company, Hafslund. The roads are owned by The Norwegian Public Roads Administration, Statens Vegvesen.

I tracked down the person in Friluftsetaten responsible for Vaterlandsparken. We agreed to meet to discuss the exact location on the square. Then I wrote an application to the administration at Friluftsetaten, refering to this meeting. After a week, I received the permit to use the square - but only when the police had given their approval.

I had sent an application to the police two months earlier, without receiving any reply. I called the police and asked to talk to the Plankontor. The person on the phone asked me which plankontor in which department I was looking for. I had been given a fax number for my application, but she did not recognize it. She wanted to connect me with the Stovner Police Departement, a departement in the outskirts of the city, since it had the most similar number. As this exhibition is in the very center of the city, I hesitated - could she not connect me with the central department? She could, but there was nobody there that could help me that day.

I had sent an e-mail to Hafslund to ask for a permit to use the light poles two weeks earlier, and not heard anything from them either. I called them to request a reply. They could not find my e-mail, so I had to re-send it.

Hopefully, my application to both the police and Hafslund has now reached the right department and person!

We are lucky to have Deichmanske Bibliotek avd Gamle Oslo, the municipal library, as a host for one of the Telart automats. Their enthusiasm and interest has been amazing. Without their effort, I would not have been able to track down all the involved; Deichmanske rents the space at Tøyen. A private owner owns the wall, another owns the specks of grass outside the library, and the municipality owns the path leading up to the library.

At this very moment we are having a workshop on the production of urban interface which started on Thursday 21 and ends on Monday 25 June. During this workshop we work on the development of artworks and define needs and processes for production. Also artists look for suitable sites for their works during their stay.

The artists articipating in this UIO workshop are:
Michelle Teran from Canada, but based in Berlin. She is currently ‘scanning’ the city of Oslo for wireless transmitting surveilance cameras and has found aleady a couple of sites/surveillance camera images which she will use for her UIO project.

Vibeke Jensen from Norway, but based in New York. Besides discussing the production of her comparably laborious project, she found a very central site for her piece. Let’s keep fingers crossed that we will get the permission to use it.

John Hawke from New York and Sancho Silva from Portugal, but based in Kairo came to Oslo for a first site visit and in order to develop a piece within their Orange Works series for UIO. While we have still no clue if they have found a site and developed a concept for it (but we are all guessing that this is the case), we could already observe small interventions into public space across from the workshop venue.

Hans Christian Gilje is focussing now on 1-3 Soundpockets for UIO and found a number of sites where the sound interventions could be situated. Building the hardware seems to be the main challenge at this point.

HC Gilje, Susanne Jaschko, Atle Barcley

Siri Austeen, Sancho Silva, John Hawke, Vibeke Jensen

Michelle Teran