selected work
sonic/performance
Permanent 8-Channel Sound Installation
In September 2011, Camille Norment introduced two new works under the project title Within the Toll. One was a permanent outdoor sound installation commissioned by the Henie Onstad Art Center as part of their ‘Kunstgave’ art commissions. The other was the first in a series of live music performances, which debuted in the Ultima New Musical Festival. Both works were inspired by the aural and metaphorical notions of the overtones of bells and the bell toll.
Utilized for its visceral omnipresent tonality, the voice of the glass armonica, is featured in both works.
Like a shimmering sonic mist, the seductive yet haunting voice of the glass armonica encircles a 'swell' in the landscape that simultaneously recalls a swollen belly and a burial mound. The hovering compositions and their subtle spatial dynamics alter the psychology of the space by intermittently echoing layers of sound as musical fragments across a clearing, like a sonic memory in a call and response with itself. They are taunting in their visceral quality as well as their fleeting presence. Appearing and repeating with trance-like persistence, they create a moving and enveloping space of reflection and perception; in an uncanny distortion of time, the space itself seems to shift and slip away. It is a fitting compliment to the allegory of the human comedy as portrayed by the statues of love, fertility, and death that exist on the site. The glass armonica compositions were recorded inside the Viegeland Mausoleum for this project, particularly for the sites acoustic qualities, as well as its allegorical imagery.
The word 'toll' refers to the sounding of bells, as well as the 'price to pay' for something. In the words of T.S. Eliot, "The tolling bell measures time not our time" (from Four Quartets). Time determines the price we pay for life itself and all its varied experiences.
Through momentary disruptions in perception, Within the Toll places one within the timeless overtones of bells that seem to linger in the distance and yet are always present.
VIDEO FILES
In September 2011, Camille Norment introduced two new works under the project title Within the Toll. One was a permanent outdoor sound installation commissioned by the Henie Onstad Art Center as part of their ‘Kunstgave’ art commissions. The other was the first in a series of live music performances, which debuted in the Ultima New Musical Festival. Both works were inspired by the aural and metaphorical notions of the overtones of bells and the bell toll.
Utilized for its visceral omnipresent tonality, the voice of the glass armonica, is featured in both works.
Like a shimmering sonic mist, the seductive yet haunting voice of the glass armonica encircles a 'swell' in the landscape that simultaneously recalls a swollen belly and a burial mound. The hovering compositions and their subtle spatial dynamics alter the psychology of the space by intermittently echoing layers of sound as musical fragments across a clearing, like a sonic memory in a call and response with itself. They are taunting in their visceral quality as well as their fleeting presence. Appearing and repeating with trance-like persistence, they create a moving and enveloping space of reflection and perception; in an uncanny distortion of time, the space itself seems to shift and slip away. It is a fitting compliment to the allegory of the human comedy as portrayed by the statues of love, fertility, and death that exist on the site. The glass armonica compositions were recorded inside the Viegeland Mausoleum for this project, particularly for the sites acoustic qualities, as well as its allegorical imagery.
The word 'toll' refers to the sounding of bells, as well as the 'price to pay' for something. In the words of T.S. Eliot, "The tolling bell measures time not our time" (from Four Quartets). Time determines the price we pay for life itself and all its varied experiences.
Through momentary disruptions in perception, Within the Toll places one within the timeless overtones of bells that seem to linger in the distance and yet are always present.
