Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.12.2016, Side 34

The R
eykjavík G
rapevine
Iceland A
irw
aves Special 20
16
34
Halldór Eldjárn made a name for
himself at an early age as a part
of the electro-pop group Sykur.
This coming Airwaves festival he’s
debuting a new project, focusing
on generative music and robot-
ics, with an online twist. Aptly
enough, we caught up with him
online, for a chat in Google Docs,
to find out more.
What’s the gist of your project
for this year’s Airwaves?
Drum machines, drummer ro-
bots, a human drummer (me), a
self-playing mini-harp (dubbed
Harper Lee) and synthesizers.
My brother Úlfur Eldjárn is join-
ing me on stage to help me con-
trol all of this. Hopefully he’ll be
playing an electric saxophone!
My music is algorithmical
and my algorithms are music.
Hopefully I’ll get to enjoy one
song of the set as a member
of the audience, if I manage to
teach my robots to compose
music as well.
So some of the music will be
self-composed?
Self-composed, or at least in-
spired and created in the mo-
ment by algorithms. I think that
could be pretty cool, to have the
music be generated by a com-
puter onstage and played with
robotic instruments. An end-
to-end approach.
… Making yourself unneces-
sary?
That should be the ultimate
goal of every musician (LOL). At
least I could call myself selfless
for doing so...
There’s no self on the stage, at
least. Has this idea been with
you for long?
Well, this is an incarnation of
stuff that I am generally very
excited about. A friend told me
the other day that every new
idea I tell him about, is just a
slight variation of one generic
idea I have. The funny thing is,
he’s absolutely right. I am very
fond of the idea of generative
music, and making two worlds
collide, the physical world and
the digital. The idea of creating
a computer program that ulti-
mately leads to a string being
plucked or a drum being struck
is so strong. Because it com-
bines the randomness of life
and creation with the cold and
mathematical digital world. The
audience relates to it on a differ-
ent level, as it’s suddenly visible
and tangible instead of being
trapped inside a computer-box
(and could just be playback, no-
body knows :-P)
And you’re inviting the audi-
ence to participate?
My self-playing harp is so much
fun to play with, that it has giv-
en me ideas for new songs just
playing around with it—making
it play insanely fast, for example.
To clarify, the harp is built out
of a small IKEA bookcase and
has 16 strings, each of which has
a small motor (called a solenoid)
that strikes the string when or-
dered to do so. Each motor can
strike each string 100 times per
second at the fastest. I want to
invite people to play around
with the harp so I will host a live
feed (soon) where people will
be able to mention the harp on
Twitter followed by a string of
note names (CCCEDDDFEEDDC
for example) and the harp will
play it! Follow @RoboticHarp on
Twitter to participate!
Your band, Sykur, will also
be performing at the festival,
what’s up with them sykurs I
ask in a question I will rewrite
to sound more smart like?
Sykur is alive and kicking, al-
though we haven’t released an
LP/EP in years. But we have
some nice stuff cookin’ and the
band is ever-young and experi-
menting with some new songs
that will make their way eventu-
ally into the physical world. We
are playing at KEX on October
22 and, of course, at Iceland Air-
waves, where you can hear our
new material!
See Halldór at Gamla Bíó on Sat-
urday Nov 5, at 20:00
Robo-Core
Halldór Eldjárn's sprightly
robots come to life
Words Sveinbjörn Pálsson
Photo Hörður Sveinsson