Projects 2002

Strange Noises

Baugur Supermarket
Reykjavik

Kitchen Motors or in the other words Johann Johannsson, Kristin Bjork Kristjansdottir and Hilmar Jenssonis, orchestrates a complete take-over of the music played in the largest Islandic chain of supermarkets i.e Baugur. For one day, easy-listening pop music serving to anaesthetize people into a docile "shopping" mood will be replaced by a different kind of audio enviroment. The supermarket is a place in the modern world where everyone goes. A place where everyone is equal. Yet the Kitchen Motors or in the other words Johann Johannsson, Kristin Bjork Kristjansdottir and Hilmar Jenssonis, orchestrates a complete take-over of the music played in the largest Islandic chain of supermarkets i.e Baugur. For one day, easy-listening pop music serving to anaesthetize people into a docile "shopping" mood will be replaced by a different kind of audio enviroment. The supermarket is a place in the modern world where everyone goes. A place where everyone is equal. Yet the music played in supermarkets, mainly generic pop music, prepared by specialist companies such as Muzak, only reflects a very limited spectrum, mainly one of Western easy-listening pop music.

Kitchen Motors proposes that for one day the music in the supermarket should reflect a wider spectrum, both culturally and emotionally. The whole range of human emotions is reflected in the world's music and there's no reason why the shopping experience cannot be one of adventure, melancholy, ecstatic joy, quiet serenity or mystic contemplation.

Kitchen Motors provides the soundtrack to such a shopping experience. They feel the insipid vacuousness of the supermarket's sonic environment does not reflect the cultural variety of today's society. Therefore Kitchen Motors designed a diverse soundtrack. Did it effect the shoppers? Did they notice? Did they ask the cashiers what's going on? If so, the cashiers was given instructions to give a small leaflet to the curious shopper, where they could find all about the experiment and the artists involved and perhaps even have their own say by answering 2-3 questions on sound pollution in the environment.

The project is initiated and produced by NIFCA, in collaboration with Kitchen Motors.

Kitchen Motors is a think tank, a record label, and an art organisation specialising in instigating collborations and putting on concerts, exhibtions, performances, chamber operas, producing films, books and radio shows based on the ideals of experimentation, collaboration, the search for new art forms and the breaking down of barriers between forms, genres and disciplines. The main area of interest is in music, with special emphasis on the electronic and improvised kind.

www.kitchenmotors.com