Cory Arcangel

49 bells chime the hours in the twin towers of Oslo City Hall. This is the biggest carillon (a musical instrument of harmonically tuned bronze bells) in the Nordic region.

The technology, which automates the chiming of bells to mark every hour, was invented in the Middle Ages, and can be seen as a medieval, analogue form of digital programming. Church bells communicated important messages to a city’s population, and the bigger the bells, the further the sound would resonate. Hail Mary is a Twitter-bot made by artist and musician Cory Arcangel, which generates a score for the carillon. You could say Twitter is the biggest bell of our time. Oslo’s carillonist Laura-Marie Rueslåtten will perform these scores from the City Hall on the first Saturday of the month throughout the exhibition period.

Where: in addition to the installation at the museum, a live performance of the work is played from Oslo City Hall, by carillonneur Laura-Marie Rueslåtten. In optimal weather conditions, the sound of the bells can be heard across large parts of central Oslo. 

When: the first Saturday of the month at 11 am (1 October, 5 November and 3 December).

Commissioned by MUNCH and FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. Performances in Oslo, Norway in collaboration with Oslo City Hall and carillonneur, Laura-Marie Rueslåtten.   

Cory Arcangel (b. 1978 USA, based in Stavanger, Norway) is an artist, composer, curator and entrepeneur. He hacks technological systems and corporate visual language to highlight their absurdity. He launched his merchandise and publishing imprint Arcangel Surfware in 2014 and many of his projects are freely available as open source online.