Stainless steel bars, stainless wire, magnets, electronic motors, aluminium structure, color filter
Dimensions: 12 x 5 x 7 m

Nine Key Passage is an interactive sound installation created for the New University Hospital in Akershus near Oslo. The installation is located outdoors along the passage leading to the main entrance.

It functions with nine infrared sensor/speaker-pairs mounted into the ceiling of the passage. Passing the sensors activate sound files which are played back from the ceiling speakers. Each speaker is playing different chord and walking through the whole transit creates a simple 9-tunes composition. When there are many people walking to different directions the arrangement gets more complex and endlessly changing.

The sound library is controlled by a computer. Every day during one month it selects a new 9-chords set, from 31 combinations in use, and the next month the library gets a new random order.

The sound bank is conceived and recorded by musicians/sound engineers James Andean, Jimi Tenor, Mika Vainio and Kimmo Oksanen together with Grönlund&Nisunen. Thereafter the sound material was edited and re-organized and 31 x 9-chords were selected by G&N to get used in the installation. The selected sounds were recorded from various electronic and processed acoustic instruments, a lot's of piano and analogue synthesizer-sounds were included. James Andean picked up his piano chords from Beethoven, Chopin and Debussy's scores. All the sounds are reduced and focusing on the character of the sound itself and its relation to the others.

Hospital is a very delicate place for a sound installation with all its implications of life and death. We wanted people to get curious and let them realize the nature of the piece in a slow manner. A tiny feeling of inspiration that a little fragment of a melody may leave was the core idea of the installation.