Ólöf Arnalds

Iceland, b. 1980.

Musical education from 1986, violin 1988-1996, classical singing 1996-2002. In 2002-2006 composition and new media at the Iceland Academy of the Arts.

First sound/video work: Söngvarar (Singers) 2002.

Ólöf has made music for several theatre and dance pieces in Iceland. She has also made arrangements, sung and played different instruments with various Icelandic musicians and artists, including Múm, Slowblow, Skúli Sverrisson, Kitchen Motors, Stórsveit Nix Noltes and Mugison.

My latest work is a video composition, Eins og sagt er (As they say) and a documentary, N.Y 2005. The documentary N.Y. 2005 is a summary from interviews with 17 individuals from different nationalities where the subject is their background and native language and the importance of music in their everyday life. I had each person make a short text about music in their own language and read it to the camera. The musical material of Eins og sagt er is totally based on the rhythm and the frequencies of these texts. This video composition shows a split screen with nine takes of me singing these texts in their original languages and playing different instruments; violin, stroh violin, viola, classical guitar, dobro guitar, charanga, koto-harp, gu-zheng-harp, drum and double bass. Each individual recording is in itself continuous and complete regarding both sound and image and together they form a one man band, performing small songs and musical themes in different languages.

The idea behind the nine frame form is basically to make recorded music come as close to live performance as possible. Before Eins og sagt er I had made another piece in the same form, but with much more simple musical material called Eins manns hljóð (Solitary sounds) where I was simply exploring the possibilities of the form. But in Eins og Sagt er (my latest piece) I´m taking the idea much further, expanding from one language to eighteen, five different instruments to eleven and three musical themes to 23.

olofarnalds@internet.is