2023 in review
Another year around the sun.
I thought I would try to sum up some of the most interesting and/or important things I did artistically in 2023, but it was too many! A lot of different things! In the end this blog post became totally overwhelming to write, so in the spirit of letting my website be a positive place (for me, hehe) I decided to not go too in depth, but freely write about some projects and feelings that comes to mind. So let’s see what happens.
I released this video of course!
Kristoffer Lislegaard - Ataraxia live at shut down library in Oslo
Full video here.
Live
I had 38 performances in 2023. That is one gig every 9,6 days, which I am pretty happy about as a DIY artist! I played music from Floating Body / Diving Mind outside Norway for the first time when I organized a mini tour in Germany, which was very cool and I documented it in a vlog. In general I am so happy with my documentation these days! It really helps me get perspective on what I am doing, communicate and share.
Ever since me and my friend Karl Erik made our first DIY band documentary when we were in our early teens I have wanted to learn how to share all this stuff somehow. I feel like I am finally getting the hang of it.
Indestructable band dvd - 2005
Funny situations on the road
Playing live brings with it so many funny moments. Like on my mentioned trip to Germany, Victor who is a user of my Snowgrains software instrument, brought his 7 year old daughter to the concert. During the concert when I was playing Snowgrains on my Organelle she leaned over to her dad and whispered “we have the same one at home daddy”.
Or like the time I played in the lunch break at Grorud litterature festival. People where eating, and I was playing ambient music. People where lining up to get food, so for me it felt like they spent forever getting over to the area where I was playing (even though I think they enjoyed it as backround music to the food queue). Anyways they showed up at last.
Then I finished a track, talked some and started playing another track, when everyone suddenly started leaving.
I was like “Hey what is going on? Did they start serving dessert?”
“No, the program is starting again”
“Ah! Ooops! Well it was nice playing for you. Good bye!”
Øy
Øy had its first single release “Sikte på 10”. This was part of Janne’s solo album Movements for Listening which is way to big of a project to describe here, but I am super happy to be part of it! You can read about this album here.
You can watch the full performance video here.
I was also part of the release concert which included 11 musicians and was a total blast!
Photos: Helge Brekke
We also played Moldejazz, DanseFestival Barents, IJsselbiennale (NL), Black Box teater, UrbanSoundArt and more. Still so proud to be able to work so closely with the fantastic Janne in our Øy project!
Woman fixing her hair and man realizing he should get his beard trimmed – Øy at Moldejazz 2023
Other projects worth mentioning
- Improvised music to Slam poetry open mic at Uhørt once a month.
Patrick Raugstad - volum. Original video on Youtube
Played live with Marius Gjersø including New Colours Festival in Gelsenkirchen Germany. He uploaded part of the performance here.
Performed as VJ for Center of the Universe at Fredrikstad Animation Festival, well documented here.
Remixed and did visuals for Modulert Grand Prix – a concept where we live remix the audio (and video) of the Eurovision song contest. Video here.
Website and software
As part of the #BeYourOwnPlattform movement, this website is slowly finding its form. I really like how I am able to use it as a home base and link people over here, put stuff in the blog, have all my most important work available here, have people sign up to my newsletter etc. I am planning to keep on posting here. It feels nice. Building my own place. Slowly.
Some new and some closer relationships with these softwares
- Doom Emacs (now organizing my life in Org mode)
- Neovim
- Faircamp
- Bash scripting
- rsync
- FFMpeg
2024: Focus on composition and community
After a year focusing on all these concerts, I am planning to focus on new compositions (no spoilers but there WILL be releases!) and community. Both in physical and digital formats. It is very cool to think about the fact that posting stuff on the internet led me to meet new people in real life in 2023. This is something I want to do more of in 2024. I guess when it comes down to it, the best things in life are shared with other people.
So thanks for reading. This makes you one of us ❤️.
See you around.
Best.
Kristoffer Lislegaard
