25,000 views, Glumbær, Harpverk

400 more views, y'all, and someone is going to be the 25.000th viewer to this blog. What an honor! It could be you! I want to know who it is. I remember MW was the 10.000th, maybe she'll refresh her page so many times that she's the winner again! If you let me know that it was you, you could get a prize from Iceland. I'm surprised that I've lasted this long; since 2006, just over once a week, gosh.

I did a couple random things lately that I thought I'd share with you.

I went to this random-ass museum in the middle of the 'ghetto' of Reykjavík, and by 'ghetto', the locals just mean that there are mostly children and immigrants living there and there aren't any designer boutiques within spitting distance. It's really quite nice otherwise; the pool has a hot-pot moat that you can lounge in underneath the lookout tower, and two waterslides. Anyway, the museum was a sort of civic-center/cafe/children's museum/doctor's office/cultural house, and it had these fabulous 'exhibits' (are they even? is it for kids to play on? is it about learning? I still can't figure it out, but I guess that's not the point) that combined a wall of clocks, a dragon that you could climb through, sound installations, a room of green felt hands, boots, wall carvings, runes, and a wall of TVs. And a giant stuffed dog the size of a small car.

In the basement of the museum were offices, but the treasures lay outside! There were these amazing displays of old icelandic postcards from as early as the 1900's, and shelves upon shelves of old children's toys, categorized by themes around Christmas.



I went to a concert of Harpverk, a harp and percussion duo. It was pretty amazing! There were some great moments, some very ideomatic works, some not-so-interesting and/or badly written moments, and then a couple REALLY wacky pieces that pushed the boundaries of the categories 'harp' and 'percussion'. Like this one, by Jesper Pederson, which looks bizarre, and indeed sounded about how it looked, but it actually was quite effective and fun. The percussionist put a blinking light on his head--the blinks were generated from a signal generator in a computer--and every time it blinked, he'd slide ball bearings down a tube which made quite a fun sound. The harpist played her new electric harp in a mostly textural way.

Another piece involved a cardboard box with a demon face in permanent marker on it, with some duct tape. I'll leave it at that. I think the eclectic mix is what makes it a really good show! Very profesh the whole time, but relaxed as well, not taking themselves too seriously. I left wanting to write something for them really badly. That's always a good sign.