DA NIENTE: A massive sound and light installation in B&W Hallerne

Experience DA NIENTE, a landmark work of Danish electronic music by Gunner Møller Pedersen, reinterpreted by award-winning composer and sound artist SØS Gunver Ryberg. A conversation across generations and timelines emerges in this immersive, site-specific installation, staged by Båll & Brand in collaboration with Strøm and The Royal Danish Theatre.

In DA NIENTE (1977), Gunner Møller Pedersen explores feedback sounds and the soundscapes that emerge when a system begins to generate and transform itself, giving rise to something appearing from nothing (‘da niente’).
SØS Gunver Ryberg has made a response and dialogue with Møller Pedersen’s original composition in her signature style, futuristic and existential - with immense respect for the original work:

"I do not view this work as an adaptation in the traditional sense, but rather as an artistic conversation across generations”, SØS Gunver Ryberg says.
“For me, it is about listening deeply to the piece, understanding Gunner Møller Pedersen’s vision, and allowing my own musical expression to offer a contemporary perspective”, she says.

DA NIENTE will be reimagined in a site-specific light and sound production, using the full scope of the colossal halls: The slow movement of massive pendulums, hanging from the 70 meter high ceilings, will be traced by lasers, drawing their meditative slo-mo sway in phosphorous materials, turning time into something visible.

The pendulum installation is inspired by Léon Foucault’s famous experiment in the Panthéon in 1851, which offered visual evidence of the Earth’s rotation.

Walk to the centre of the hall and feel how the quadrophonic sound setup turns the subsonic bass from DA NIENTE into a physical experience. Explore the lights emerging from the secret passages between the hundreds of cargo containers, stacked like the bricks of giants. Watch time glow in the dark. Sense the rotation of the earth.

With a Culture Night wristband, visitors can enter the installation continuously between 18:00 and 24:00.

The 30-minute experience runs in a loop, starting every half hour. Audiences are free to move through the hall at their own pace and stay as long as they wish.

This new production of DA NIENTE is part of Strøm’s project Lydskatten, dedicated to preserving and disseminating the history of Danish electronic music. This is the third cooperation in the B&W Halls between Båll & Brand, Strøm, Det Kgl. Teater and Gunner Møller Pedersen - and the end of the trilogy (preceded by SOM ILD & VAND and LAMENTATION DE MORUROA.)