Norwegian (Bokmål)

This is the first HTML adaptation of a short story first published on ten loose sheets of paper in the so-called "envelope novel" Sesam 71  which Bringsværd published with Jon Bing in 1971. The story is told in the form of a cross-referenced dictionary giving definitions of words that describe a dystopic future world where over-population has become so extreme that each story of a house is built so that the ceiling can be lowered as there is need for more room. The title plays upon this, and in translation means something like, "Damn. They just lowered the ceiling height again. Must remember to buy new knee protectors." This is the example given to explain usage of the word "faen" in the dictionary. 

The publication year of 1996 is approximate. A second version was made in 1999 by Marius Watz, and this simple HTML version definitely predates Watz' version.

The original "envelope novel" that the 1971 paper version was part of is part of the Norwegian National Library's digitised collection, and is openly accessible to readers with Norwegian IP addresses.

"svevedikt" ("poetry floating in the air") consists of seven parts, each in a loop. Every poem is created out of Norwegian words, fixed in the same position all through the animation, but exposed in different degrees. Each poem starts up exposing a few letters. The number of letters is increasing until all of them are seen. Then the number of letters is reduced in a new way. The words are selected in a non-semantic way, and each viewer will experience this differently. Both the images and the sound of the letters when read are important for the experience. The positions of the words have much in common with how the poet made concrete poetry in the sixties.

(Source: Author's description)

In “svevedikt” he [Ormstad] goes further on with an animation of a poem that moves continuously and will never stay still for its reader. In her extensive catalogtext on “svevedikt” Karen Wagner presents the poem in context of Ormstads authorship. (Source: Hans Kristian Rustad, ELINOR)

This video project explores Norwegian folk histories that return as fragments in light of ongoing volcanic eruptions. The project was recorded in Bergen following the disruptions caused by the activities of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. A folk history of disaster is set against slowly revolving images set in a contemporary landscape. This is the first of a series of works recorded in Norway that juxtapose folk histories and contemporary events to explore narrative and associative characteristics of cultural anxieties and collective memory. The project was researched and filmed by Roderick Coover in 2010 thanks to a distinguished-scholar-in-residence award from the University of Bergen.

Neseblod means "nose bleed" in Norwegian, and a blurred photo of a man's face, with blood around his nose, is a key visual element of the piece. This is a dynamic, audio-visual work where the reader can affect which sounds are produced and which textual fragments are displayed on the screen. The background consists of three images that repeat in a loop at the same time as a white line continuously moves in a loop from top to bottom of the screen. The reader can move eight white dots around on the screen, and each dot has its own sound and a small textual fragment. Each time the white line scans a white dot the sound and the textual fragment are realised. The work's aesthetic expression depends on how many dots the reader chooses to activate, and how the reader organises the dots in the space. (source: Hans Kristian Rustad for elinor.nu)

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The title Bokstavlek translates as "letter play", and the work can be characterised as an aesthetic tool, or a textual instrument, that allows the reader to play with letters and words. The reader can choose which letters to hang on a power line, constructing words or phrases, and each letter is held by a small black bird that regularly flies across the screen before returning, letter in claws, to the power line.

This "cut up" poem is told slowly, in small white letters on a black screen. Morten Skogly writes that this is a "cut up" of poems written by him that "writes itself (for the patient)." Phrases appear almost as on a screensaver, creating connections on the screen that almost always make sense despite their random connections. A voice is consistent, an anxious voice: "Don't leave me here", it writes. This is an example of generative poetry.