About the Artist

Birgir Örn Thoroddsen (born 1976) is currently studying fine art, he is better known to be the only member of the band Curver, that has been active for 4 years. The band did release among other things the record Ocean. Birgir has also taken part in various forms of performances and art shows. He has composed film music and is a guitar player in the surf board band Waves. Birgir got early on interested in random music and started by making a system that made it possible to play pictures, draft, and words and therefor hear the melody of the things.

About Tone System number 1

The performance Murder-Words is a mostly structured from Tone system Number 1. Created by Birgir. A system that translates letters into notes. Every letter has it's note and the system covers almost 4 octaves in the Chromatic scale, but it is possible to adjust the system to any musical scale that is appropriate each time. Therefor the possibilities of the system are in an abundance. It's possible to play poetry, play conversations and in that case the persons in the conversation are transformed into instruments with different empathize, pace and tone scale. It's also possible to enrich the spoken word in films and unleash the hidden melodies from the words and sentences.

About the Musical Performace

The piece that Birgir will perform at Craters is called Murder-Words. It's an attempt to hear hidden melodies from words and sentences that are in one way or another related to murders and to change our perception of it. Even though words can unleash some specific emotions than the inner meaning and connection be of totally different nature. Who knows for example how the word infant consuming (which usually horrifies people) might turn out - maybe it's a beautiful string of tones that has little reference to the actual deed. It might actually make one feel like an infant (that is not being consumed). But it's not something that can be taken for granted that the words will come out in the tone system in their opposite meaning - they might add to the meaning of the words or not be related to them at all. All is built upon the random elements and that is the fun part of random music - you never know what to expect. The main source in the piece murder-Words will be tone system number 1. but there will be some other sources of sounds, like a guitar that is tuned to the word murder and the Bibbaphone. The Bibbaphone is a random musical instrument that is specially made by Birgir. It makes sounds off radio waves, heat from the body and the electricity in the surroundings. The piece will take about 3 minutes and is some sort of introduction to that is possible to with the assistance of the tone system.