PARALLAX+TVEIT

Parallax + Tveit create immersive musical landscapes where acoustic and electroacoustic sound intersect. The collaboration began in 2013 as an ad hoc performance inside composer and sound artist Anders Tveit’s multichannel installation Ierotelestía – A Phantasmagorical Vision of an Acousmatic Cultat Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo.

Following this encounter, NOTAM, who originally commissioned the installation, invited the artists to further develop the collaboration, resulting in the work A Parallax View, commissioned for the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festivalin 2015.

A Parallax view

A Parallax View is presented in a 12-speaker circular setup with an eight-meter diameter. The audience is placed inside the circle, surrounded by loudspeakers, while the performers remain on the outside. Through live processing, multichannel diffusion, and acoustic sound sources, the work immerses the listener in a spatial sound field that bypasses the traditional point-based localization of sound. The listening room itself—its acoustics, loudspeakers, instruments, and electronics—becomes a single, unified instrument.

In this work, Parallax and Anders Tveit explore the borderlands between composed and improvised music, and between acoustic and electronic sound. Unlike traditional multichannel electroacoustic works, where sound movement and placement are fixed in advance, Parallax + Tveit approach space as an open, performative field. The spatial behavior of sound is shaped in real time, allowing the performers to improvise not only with sound, but with the act of listening itself.

Over the years, Parallax and Tveit have collaborated on concerts, installations, and workshops presented at venues and festivals including Ultima (2015), Momentum – Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art (2015), a nyMusikk tour with A Parallax View(2016), and tours in the USA and Canada (2017).

Inside–Outside

Their most recent collaboration, Inside–Outside, builds on this long-term artistic dialogue. Premiered in January 2022, the work is conceived as a 50-minute live sound installation that challenges conventional roles, media, and performance situations. At the core of the project lies a conceptual reversal: in acoustic music, instruments are the medium of sound, while in electroacoustic music, loudspeakers traditionally fulfill this role. Inside–Outsidedeliberately blurs and exchanges these functions.

Using advanced music technology, vibrating transducers, and miniature microphones placed inside acoustic instruments, the work opens up new sonic possibilities:

• Electronic material resonates through acoustic instruments rather than loudspeakers, just as acoustic instruments may resonate through speaker systems.

• Pure electronic signals set resonant surfaces into motion, functioning as electronically controlled instrument preparations. This creates situations where the musician is simultaneously playing and being played, forming recursive feedback loops.

• Digital analyses of instrumental timbre and characteristics are used to control live sound processing—sometimes allowing one instrument’s behavior to directly shape another’s sonic transformation.

• Various combinations of these approaches merge into complex, ambiguous sound environments.

The concept of parallax—the coexistence of multiple perspectives on the same phenomenon—runs through the entire project. Audience members and performers share the same sonic situation, yet experience it differently, drawing individual conclusions from a common perceptual field. In this way, Inside–Outsidebecomes both a musical and perceptual investigation, challenging conventions of authorship, interaction, and listening.

Masterclasses

In addition to performances, Parallax + Tveit offer masterclasses focusing on improvisation, sound perception, and spatial music-making. Topics may include:

• Interplay and improvisation using acoustic, electronic, and sampled sound

• Balancing and shaping sound in space: placement of sound sources and multichannel diffusion

• Perception and illusion: live processing techniques and ambisonic presentation using proprietary and open-source software

• Extended techniques, instrument preparations, and their applications

• Development of compositional frameworks and strategies for navigating structure in performance

With an open and exploratory approach, Parallax draw on influences from jazz, folk music, electroacoustic music, minimalism, and noise. Through extended techniques, found objects, and acoustic simulations of electronic sound, they continuously challenge traditional instrumental roles—placing sound itselfat the center of their artistic identity.