‘Operation Manual for a Stick’

The sound potential of lampposts, gutters and trees is harnessed in ‘Operation Manual for a Stick’, an audiovisual piece composed from thousands of samples filmed by the artist in his Oslo neighbourhood.

Using a percussion stick given to him by a friend some five years previously, along with a bass mallet and his own fingers, Nikoladze turns everyday features of the urban landscape into musical instruments. To develop this work, the artist walked over 100 kilometres and recorded more than two terabytes of samples, a treasury of beats and found sounds which come together in a dynamic, life-affirming arrangement.

Energetic, almost frenetic sections are interspersed with silence, birdsong or the gentle footsteps of elderly passersby. The images, a series of fixed shots at eye level which consistently feature only the stick, found instrument and Nikoladze’s hand, place the viewer in the artist’s shoes. Developed in the wake of the 2020 COVID lockdown, this musical psychogeography reads not only as an invitation to discover the sound lives of objects but to look afresh at our everyday surroundings.