ALVA II is an audio and video installation, made by Sophia Ioannou Gjerding and Xenia Xamanek. ALVA II deals with the voice as a prosthetic element separated from the body.

In ALVA II we follow Mlle. Mlle is a voice that travels in a ghost box. A ghost box is a device for communication with other dimensions and a medium through which voices without bodies can speak. Mlle encounters hosts, shells, ghosts, vocal tracts, other objects and other voices. They sing, speak, hum and cry through ghost boxes. Throughout Mlle’s journey romances and sorrow exist in songs and voices. 

The video installation consists of a one-channel video projection and a four-channel audio setup for the viewer to enter. Different voices travel between the speakers. They sing and speak a mixture of phrases, sounds and verses as a musical composition. The installation works as a bodily experience itself, with several shifts in direction of the voices, as if the viewer is standing in the middle of a choir or circle of ghosts.


CREDITS

Concept and script: Sophia Ioannou Gjerding and Xenia Xamanek
3D generalist / landscape scenes: Lars Hemmingsen Nørgaard
3D animation / laboratory and flowers: Sophia Ioannou Gjerding
Stopmotion / Hydra: Xenia Xamanek and Sophia Ioannou Gjerding
2D animation: Xenia Xamanek and Sophia Ioannou Gjerding
Music and sound production: Xenia Xamanek
Supplementary sound production: Sophia Ioannou Gjerding
Technical assistance: Tobias Sejersdahl and Fritjof K. Nørretranders
Voices: Mlle – Camille Doussy
Double vox: Holger Hartvig Nielsen and Cæcilie Trier
Channeling vox: Ribka Maria Pattinama Coleman
Host vox: Francesca Burattelli
Footage vox: Robin La Ree Berry
Ghost vox: Aoife Slevin
Flute: Johanne Buus Andersen
Vocal tracts: Models used from Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis, Aalto University, School of Science (published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License).

Supported by The Danish Arts Foundation and Knud Højgaards Fond.