Mike Rijnierse – Klok

Mike Rijnierse – Klok

Mike Rijnierse is known for his large scale site specific installations, where the audience gets incorporated into the context of the work. For the 11th edition of TodaysArt, Mike Rijnierse has developed a site specific work for the pier in Scheveningen. During the festival, a 100 kg church bell will bungee jump from The Pier, from the bungee jump tower. The sixty meter fall of the bell will result in a unique sound experience.

While contacting Royal Eijsbouts Bell Foundry, world’s largest manufacturer of cast bronze bells, carillons, swinging bells, clocks, and bell and clock towers, asking whether they wanted to contribute to the project, Joep van Brussel asked if he had understood it correctly: “So, it is like cycling towards a church with the speed of 60 km per hour?” The answer lies in the question. Joep immediately understood the concept of ‘Klok’. The effect is commonly heard when a sounding object approaches, passes, and recedes from an observer. Compared to the emitted frequency, the received frequency is higher during the approach, identical at the instant of passing by, and lower during the recession. The fall of the sounding bell will cause a Doppler effect.

Mike Rijnierse (1974) is an artist known for his large scale site specific installations, where the audience gets incorporated into the context of the work. His installations and performances are instruments in which dialogue and interaction are developed for sensory investigation, as a platform for interdisciplinary research. The relation of space and time or the geography and the perception of the observer are used as parameters for musical development. As a teacher at the Interaction Design department of ArtEZ Art Academy, Arnhem (NL), Mike developed the course Design of Instruments, which focuses on the development of new design tools and instruments.

In 2005, Rijnierse developed a 16 channel sound installation PAN, which stretched out along a 170 meter path inside of the sculpture garden of the Kröller­Müller Museum for the opening of ‘Kijk Uit!/Attention!’ by Krijn Giezen. That work was followed in that same year by a 16 channel sound installation ‘CITY CIRCLES’ in the Grote Marktstraat and resulted in ‘THX_The Hague INT’L’ in 2007. TodaysArt approached him to develop a concept for the Central Station of The Hague in 2008, which he developed in collaboration with Staalplaat Soundsystem and Erik Hobijn. This resulted in ‘STATION TO STATION’.