Samplings from New World

Vesterheim is a national treasure that explores the diversity of American immigration through the lens of Norwegian-American experience, showcases the best in historic and contemporary Norwegian folk and fine arts, and preserves living traditions through classes in Norwegian culture and folk art, including rosemaling (decorative painting), woodcarving and woodworking, knifemaking, and textile arts.

Vesterheim houses over 24,000 artifacts, which include large samplings from the fine, decorative, and folk arts, and the tools and machinery of early agriculture, lumbering, and other immigrant industries. The lives of the people who settled this nation were often as colorful as their folk art and their stories speak through the objects they left behind.

When Norwegian immigrants wrote back to Norway about Vesterheim, their western home, they spoke for countless others from many cultures who helped build a nation in the New World.

Just as Norwegian immigration to America began to peak in 1877, at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, Norwegian Americans began collecting and preserving objects documenting their chapter of the immigrant story, making them pioneers in the preservation of cultural diversity in America.

Today that early collection has grown into Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, an independent not-for-profit organization, and the most comprehensive museum in the United States dedicated to a single immigrant group. Also, Vesterheim is accredited by the American Association of Museums (AAM).

But Vesterheim is more than a world-class museum. It is a cultural center dedicated to preserving living traditions by offering classes in Norwegian folk art and culture, Elderhostels, and special programs for pre-school, elementary, secondary, and college students. Vesterheim also hosts events, lectures, and special exhibitions scheduled throughout the year.

We invite you to visit Vesterheim. Help preserve Norwegian immigrant culture and celebrate the variety of our country's rich ethnic traditions.

to Microsonic mUsic

Realitat’s Microsonic Landscapes use 3-D printing machinery and algorithmic mapping to arrive at physical manifestations of recorded musical sound. These handheld sculptures are unique amongst one another because each represents the formalization of a different musical recording. In this instance, each recording is actually a full-length album; the albums chosen were picked according to Realitat’s musical tastes. Their self-stated mission, to create “an algorithmic exploration of the music we love,” is successfully completed. Each album is copied onto a program called Processing which maps and extrapolates the sounds on each song into coordinates that the 3-D printer can turn into solid mass. The objects are printed in a series of rings, but aside from that, the form taken can vary wildly, with each record registering unique patterns of height, depth, solid, and void. The process employed here represents a direct and literal translation of sound into form. There are no variables or inputs applied to the algorithms that would manipulate or affect the final form.

This project represents a successful attempt at using digital means to map, extrapolate, and formalize musical sound. This process is rendered through the use of digital mapping software and a 3-D printer, creating unique and specific formations with differing patterns of solid and void, as well as height and

an Urban Toy

BLOOM is what its designers call an “urban toy.” It is a “distributed social game and collective ‘gardening’ experience that seeks the engagement of people in order to construct fuzzy BLOOM formations.” These formations are aggregate volumes composed of repeated, identical parts, which the designers refer to as “cells.” These “cells” are designed and fabricated by the designers themselves, Alisa Andrasek of Biothing, and Jose Sanchez of Plethora Project, in London. Meant to contribute an air of jovial democratized design in relation to the 2012 London Olympic Games, BLOOM is representative of the artistic, collective act. Each individual component, as the designers explain, can do nothing on its own, but instead, reach their full and limitless potential when arrayed en masse.

Each of the BLOOM pieces has three potential sites for connection along its outline, enabling it to be compiled both two and three dimensionally. This embedded form of connection, however, is all that is provided to the user, who is free to use as few or as many pieces as they choose to construct an installation. It is the simple combinations inherent between these cells that can potentially produce many different mutations. This project is emblematic of democratic design as seen through the lens of digital fabrication, aggregation, and repetition.
 

a Literal Movement

Breakfast New York City is an interactive installation in Midtown Manhattan that both mimics and responds to interactive movement. Located that the intersection of 32nd Street and 6th Avenue, this installation is a revival of an antique sign technology that utilizes over 40,000 metallic spinning dots on a computerized surface to broadcast messages, including scrolling text and images. Because of its analog technology, the mechanism that is analogous to digital pixels, actually mimics the movement and rotation of pistons on a mechanical engine. The dots are either black or white, depending on which side is exposed, creating a binary that, when taken in aggregate and seen from afar, render images and text. This literal movement, however, from black to white, is done so through mechanical means, creating various clicks, like those made on a typewriter.

The digital systems, however, interrupt the analog by allowing the interface to respond to movement located directly in front of the display. Through these means, the display is able to respond to passersby, traffic, and all manner of stimuli, which then interrupt and dematerialize the scrolled information. This system creates a highly unique, ever-changing display of information that takes on the character of urban life. This project features highly-tactile, digitally derived displays that are manifested through analog, mechanical movements. The installation responds to spontaneous urban life through the articulation and juxtaposition of these digital processes and analog displays. The following video previews the installation in greater detail.