örö
2016–2023
Örö is an artist’s book, music and film release. It was produced through long-term fieldwork and experimentation on the small Finnish Archipelago island of Örö.
Closed to the public for a century after the establishment of military fortifications, the Örö ‘fortress’ island was reopened in 2016. Through the Öres programme, Rob stayed in former barracks on the island for two midwinter and midsummer periods across this transition, as abandoned military structures fell into ruin and rare biodiversity flourished.
Rob’s work with sound, film, images and writing on Örö have been collected in an ambitious new multimedia release on Blackford Hill. An artist’s book includes writing on the development of artistic practices through slow, patient attention to an island in flux. The texts fuse art, ecology, geography and history to explore the landscape’s multiple histories and futures. Richly illustrated with Rob’s photographs, cameraless prints, cyanotypes, maps and sketches, the book has an embossed foil-blocked cover.
The release includes access to Rob’s Örö installation film, which documents the island’s unique landscape. The film is accompanied by a sound work which is composed using field recordings and sonifications of environmental data such as ocean eutrophication, geological formation and forest photosynthesis.
Four environmental soundscapes taken along transect walks across the island are also included in the release. These pieces document the creaks and groans of midwinter sea ice, the birdsong of midsummer pine forests, the hum of military radar, the chirps of insect life in sphagnum bogs, the echoes of abandoned underground bunkers, and the resonations of navy boat cannon fire.
The release includes two ‘singles’ – Midsummer and Midwinter – composed from the film soundwork with additional instrumentation from Pete Harvey (Modern Studies, King Creosote) on cello, and Andrew Wasylyk on piano and analogue synthesiser. A limited edition of the release comes with these singles – each ambient washes of melody, drone, found sound and field recordings – on lathe-cut 7” vinyl.
