Photo: Christer Männikus
About
John Andrew Wilhite is invited to the Okulus symposium 2025 to compose and perform the commissioned work entitled “SignalCloth”, or “Three Blind Cartographies”. Together with musicians Tanja Orning, Hans P. Kjorstad and Kari Rønnekleiv, a work is created that explores a landscape from different perspectives. The landscapes are not only experienced differently, but also located at different distances from each other when seen or heard from different directions or in different representations. The project is explored concretely through acoustic and musical experimentation, and as a text in a form that the audience will also experience.
Cartographic techniques today deal with the idea that a landscape can be represented “objectively”, that is, so that it matches from “no one and all” perspectives. When we use a tool like Google Maps, we can easily forget that this is just one kind of representation of a landscape. But does this kind of representation work when we think about acoustics, where sounds on a mountainside can sound radically different from different directions? And what about the people who experience the landscape, can’t they see different things in the same river, for example? Doesn’t a landscape potentially mean more to those who live there?
The word “Map” comes from the Latin “mappa” meaning “tablecloth” – the idea was that a map was drawn on a piece of cloth that covered something. What if we still cover things up when we map? What if documenting a landscape removes us from it? That is not the same as claiming that truth does not exist, just that it may not always be “obvious”. Art allows us to experience these strange phenomena – what it is like to know a landscape, where an artistic experience can expand it, or give it new meanings that change how we see or hear it.
The comcert will be performed at Okulus the 30th August 14.00. See full program for symposium “Refugie” here
The artist
John Andrew Wilhite (b. 1991, Richmond, VA, USA) is a double bassist and composer based in Oslo. His works explore political and ecological issues by combining compositional and performance techniques with lyrics and other “extra-musical” elements. John Andrew’s works have been performed throughout Scandinavia, Europe, Asia and North America, at festivals such as Ultima, Östersjöfestivalen, Sacred Realism, Barents Spektakel, Meteor, Berlin Jazz Festival, and more. He has been a student of Norwegian double bass virtuoso Håkon Thelin, and is currently a doctoral candidate at the Norwegian Academy of Music.
Related projects
