Reykjavík Grapevine - apr. 2021, Blaðsíða 18

18The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 04— 2021Music
gpv.is/music
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A Harp, A
Human, And A
Machine
Úlfur Hansson’s Se"ulharpa births a new sound
Words: Hannah Jane Cohen Photo: Elísabet Davísdóttir
“When it worked and I finally got
the string sound working cor-
rectly, it was pure magic,” Úlfur
Hansson says—a big smile on his
face. He’s fresh off of taking first
prize at this year’s Guthman Musi-
cal Instrument Competition with
his own instrument, an electro-
magnetic harp called the Segul-
harpa. Right now, he’s reminiscing
on his first attempts at making it.
“No one is telling you whether this
is possible or not and then you go
and get it. It’s a Frankenstein mo-
ment,” he grins.
A sealed mystery
“I’ve always been into electronic
music since I was small, but when
I became a bit older, I got really in-
terested in death metal and black
metal and that kind of music.
Going to concerts, you’d just feel
the music in your body. It’s such
a visceral experience,” Úlfur says,
when asked about the origins of
the harp. “So that physical aspect
of sound became a huge deal for
me, and it’s an age old dilemma
with electronic music—it’s al-
ways confined to speaker systems.
You’re programming something
on a computer. Then you either run
it and it does its thing or you have
pre-programmed tracks that you
play like a keyboard, but the sound
is always coming from another
source. It’s almost as if there’s
always an extra step away from
your body or your immediate in-
teraction with the instrument that
you’re playing.”
Úlfur, therefore, sought to see
what he could do to rectify this
gap. How could one create a three-
dimensional meaning and physi-
cal relationship within the context
of electronic music? And then, like
a lightbulb, the Segulharpa ap-
peared.
“This [Segulharpa] just came
to me—what it was supposed to
look like, the feeling that it evokes.
I wanted to create something that
was very mysterious and that you
don't have to be technologically
oriented to interact with at all. It
doesn't have any markings or any
text or anything. It doesn't even
have moving mechanical parts,”
he says, smiling. “All you do is just
approach this kind of monolithic
thing, and out of curiosity, you
start touching it and it responds
to your touch. As soon as I had
that idea, it just took many years
to implement it and figure out how
to make that work. So even though
it’s very complex technically, that's
not the point.”
Fear of feedback
Within a perfect wooden circle,
the Segulharpa contains 25 steel
strings that are curved within a
magnetic field. On the top of the
instrument lie copper and steel
circles that, once touched, oscil-
late the strings through electricity,
emitting a sound that’s created by
a machine but controlled through
the nuanced touch of the player.
“It’s based on feedback, which
is an inherently unstable phe-
nomenon that provokes almost
like a fear reaction, which makes
it exciting and unpredictable. So
you’re always unsure of what this
process that you’re getting your-
self involved with is gonna create
as you touch it,” Úlfur continues.
“And I think that physicality and
that uncertainty is interesting as
you touch the instrument and play
with it. I felt this was an attempt
to create something that would be
a kind of two-way communication
between human and machine.”
The sound itself makes one
think of what a church organ
would sound like were it floating
within the singularity of a black
hole. It’s trance-like, but with a
stillness and cleanness that man-
ages to walk the line between dis-
comfort and meditation.
Inconsistency, though, is a
hallmark of the instrument. “The
strings want to go the path of least
resistance,” Úlfur says. “So they
decide whether they jump up an
octave or an octave and a fifth,
and all the way up the harmonics
scale.”
A being
Úlfur hasn’t yet used it in any of his
own compositions, but for him, the
innovation and exploration of the
instrument was the ultimate pleas-
ure. “I think building instruments
from their most discrete elements
is just my obsession,” he laughs.
“I’m making new things all the
time. It’s mainly the interface of
how you’re interacting with a thing
that creates the instrument. It’s
not about the technology, or how it
works. It’s how you feel when you’re
touching it, or in the presence of
it,” he concludes. “It’s like the harp
is looking at you when you’re in its
space. And it’s really fascinating
when you finish something how an
instrument can become more than
the sum of its parts. It’s an intimate
relationship once you get involved
with these things. It has a charac-
ter.” He pauses. “It’s almost like a
being.”
The Segulharpa in all its mechanical beauty
“I felt this was
an attempt to
create some-
thing that would
be a kind of
two-way com-
munication
between human
and machine.”