This project was developed as an artistic research process beginning in 2021, resulting in a commisioned project that was put on display as a featured co-exhibition with visual artist Susanne Paluszewski-Hau. Including a +8 min audioloop running through a kinetic, vibrating sculpture and designated performances available for a general audience at the Marstal Maritime Museum, autumn 2022.

The initial fase focused on developing a physical shape that could contain a sounding portrait of the famous Marstal maritime engine, AKA the Marstal Motor. This process resulted in an exoskeleton-like sculpture that framed the Marstal Motor.

The actual Marstal Motor is exhibited as part of Marstal Maritime Museums regular exhibition that holds several variations of boat engines in a modern, renovation workshop facility. From here, an extraction process of the sounds from a running Marstal Motor took place. This process had the exo-skeleton set up around the Marstal Motor, thus infusing an acoustic footprint into the exo-skeleton.

The acoustic footprint was then used as basis for an acoustic awakening of the exo-skeleton into a Marstal Motor-esque sounding object that reacted to a very delicate electroacoustic feedback system installed upon the exo-skeleton. A creative variation of the re-amping technique known from music production. Only in this matter, matter itself is the object of interest as opposed to a representational sound-effect.

The results were exhibited as a sounding sculpture and a series of performances, based on the process of an acoustic awakening of the exoskeleton into a sounding object.

As a symbolic gesture, this piece is as much a portrait as well as a dedication to the balancing act of taming and releasing energy with the purpose of progress, creation and development. A balancing act that is equally characteristic for the historical and contemporary development of Marstal as a society, as well as an entrepreneuric feature behind the history of the Marstal Motor.

Commisioned from Marstal Maritime Museum with support from Danish Arts Foundation