It seems counterintuitive that a sound artist would seek out one of the quietest places on earth for inspiration. But that is just what Ed Osborn, assistant professor of visual art, did this fall when he ventured to the high Arctic.
It was a fulfillment of a longtime passion — the exploration of a space long seen as off-limits but now accessible and in need of a narrative, he said.
Osborn participated in Arctic Circle, a program seeking to bring together creative practitioners of all types aboard an Arctic-bound vessel to create "a nexus where art intersects science, architecture and activism … to engage in the central issues our time," according to the program's website. For 18 days, during the months of September and October, Osborn journeyed with 19 fellow participants representing a cross-section of visual, sound and performance artists and writers. The vessel carried the artists from the northernmost part of Norway to Svalbard, an archipelago within the Arctic Circle.
Osborn, who teaches classes on electronic media and sound in art, decided to focus his work in the icy expanses of Svalbard on capturing the place in the language of sound and moving images. A region thought of as "a huge social anomaly" in its emptiness and often caught up in the "fabulous claims of a faraway place," the Arctic needed the verisimilitude it deserved, Osborn said.
But the contours of his project only took shape as the journey progressed. Without exact plans beforehand, Osborn allowed the space to inspire and define his work. Known to take a minimalist approach to art, he said he decided to focus on the intense solitude and silence that surrounded him and shape a project without "anything decorative."
He proceeded to record hours of sound — "water, waves, ice and ambient noise including footsteps and voices from other travelers," according to an article published on the Brown website. He plans to compile these materials into a two-channel audio installation that will be part of a larger audio-video work. "It's not just quiet like you think of here, like when you go into the woods — it's really, really super quiet," he said.
One instance that shaped Osborn's conception of the space was an exploration of an abandoned Soviet mining town that led to surprising inspiration. "We were walking through there, people were talking and suddenly you could hear their voices bouncing off buildings, which is a totally normal thing to hear, but after being in absolute quiet in the wilderness, it was a shock. It was unnatural," he said.
He also created a video record of his journey, which he hopes to distill into the multichannel video component of his installation. Holding true to his minimalist style, he let the landscape speak for itself.
"There are all these readings of how nature looks or how the natural terrain around here looks," he said of lands unlike the Arctic Circle. "Pictorial history, visual history, a lot of social history — it's all very complex. There's a lot less of that here."
Osborn did not take part in the program on a whim. He has long harbored a passion for the almost vacuum-like quiet, the icy whiteness of the arctic regions of the earth. He has always been fascinated by the almost "imaginary" or "fabulous," as he calls them, narratives associated with the space.
One specific narrative associated with the Arctic is that of the Koestler broadcasts, a series of descriptive broadcasts first dispatched in 1931 by Arthur Koestler, a writer who flew over the Arctic onboard a Zeppelin and described what he saw over the radio.
"The story goes that he spent a lot of airtime describing things in ways that only a writer could do it. Whether this actually happened or not, I don't know," Osborn said. "There's this kind of blank space about what's the story of this description. It could be that it was a story of a far away place that gets embellished, but it could be this other thing too."
Inspired by the broadcasts, or at least the idea of them — whether they happened remains uncertain — and the idea of sound being tied to a space through radio, Osborn sought to bring his sound expertise to the landscape and fill in the gaps that Koestler could not from the sky.
But the experience of an arctic expedition is more than simply doing what one comes to do. Along with his work, Osborn developed a strong camaraderie with his fellows on board. Naturally, there was constant collaboration as everyone sought fodder for their works from others on board.
Cultural connections were forged as well, over mealtime discussions and quick-footed escapes back to the warmth of the vessel. The group comprised creative people from all over the world, hailing from areas like Palestine, Australia, Taiwan, the Netherlands and the United States. All came with work on their mind, but they left with a sense of weathered solidarity, he said.
Art-seekers can expect to see a lecture presentation of Osborn's work next spring and a gallery showing of his work at the Wheeler School next fall. There is also the possibility that his installation will find at least a temporary home in the Perry and Marty Granoff Center, as well as the chance that the two-channel installation will be broadcast on radio.
Whatever the case, Osborn said, "I need to make sure I'm ready to show my work."
