On Art, Fire and Ice

Visual Art; Searching for New Forms of Expression through the WEB.

Norwegian artist Vigdis Holen is involved in the pioneering work of
computer technology in the Fine Art scene. She has already taken a step
aside from traditional painting and printmaking towards the techniques
of the computer world as means to achieve artistic expression. The
studio she built herself is situated in a dramatic landscape in
west-Norway, far from the country's city life and the urban metropolis
of the Fine Arts. She reaches out to colleagues from her studio through
telecommunication, an act not yet common for those in the artistic
environments of the small country of Norway. The scientific and research
communities have long ago taken up data technology for work development;
the fine artists community is new on the scene.

Mountain climbing and mountain lifestyles has played a vital role in the
personal development of Vigdis Holen, since her childhood days and
throughout her college and university years.

Early in life she discovered possibilities of living with people
concerned with developing a global consciousness and creating
international orientations in daily life. For Vigdis this started in a
very special setting, near her parents' home, during the 60s and 70s on
the hillside above the large valley of Gudbrandsdalen, 50 miles north of
Lillehammer town, on the "Farm in Kvam". With the appearance of a
student-exchange program from University of California learning the
Norwegian language through a summer-intensive course, the Farm in Kvam
appeared as a meeting place and an environment of knowledge exchange on
many levels, including art and traditional hillside farming. Lifestyle
in an ecological perspective has been part of the world of ideas
surrounding Vigdis Holen since she made these first connections with
people traveling to expand their knowledge and understanding of the
world. Knowledge between these far away cultures never stopped.

Today Vigdis Holen appears on the Web Art scene in a project made in
cooperation between herself in her own landscape and studio space and
Professor Keigo Yamamoto, Mushashino Art University, Tokyo. As an Art
performance "The Bond" appeared as a happening for 5 days, staged in
real time between these two places Gloppen, West Norway and Yugawara,
Kanagawa district, performance of dancing fire and water. The point of
departure is the extreme expressions of the earth itself, a volcanic
field in Hakone national Park and the eternal ice of Jostedalsbreen of
Norway. Vigdis Holen climbed near the dangerous parts of the eternal ice
glacier with her camera, shared her images with the audience in the
other end of the globe through telecommunications. The Hakone volcano
area was covered visually by Ayuka Yamazaki, and the images are melted
into a total expression, reworked as an Art Video.

[…]

–"One must know where to place one