“Óróapuls Harmonic Tremor / Ben Frost & Francesco Fabris” is out now on @nastymagazine
Through vibration, pressure, and volcanic matter, Harmonic Tremor by Ben Frost and Francesco Fabris transforms sound into a physical force rather than atmosphere. Rooted in Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula, the exhibition explores instability, resonance, and the tension between body and environment.
Artists: @ethermachines , @france.fabris
Venue: @nylistasafnid
Words: @giuliaapiceni
Editor: @mariabramenko
Junior Editor: @annalisa_fabbruucci
Full story on our website!
Earth Day: Like a lucid dream over the charred remains of the burnt Amazon Rainforest, this scene from Broken Spectre was filmed from the nose of a helicopter using a multispectral video camera of my own design, custom built for us in collaboration with a spectroscopy and machine vision engineer. The camera reveals the health and degradation of the rainforest’s plant life by registering red at exactly 650 nanometers, green at 700nm, and blue at 730nm. This is the “vegetation index” that environmental scientists use to understand the underlying damage done to the rainforest, but is also used widely by agribusiness and mining interests to exploit the rainforest. We searched for the ‘big burn’ for many months, using NASA remote sensing maps and listening to people on the ground in Rondônia. Finally, when we had the helicopter and camera ready, and all the conditions were right, mafia groups who carry out the burning lit such a huge part of the forest on fire that we knew this was the big one and prepared for flight the following morning. But that evening rain arrived in buckets, inches of rain flooding the streets of Porto Velho, and we were so angry because we thought we had lost our chance to document the fires that we had spent years preparing for. But we flew anyway, and the resulting imagery was far more powerful than if there had been smoke in the air. There was so little smoke or carbon in the air, due to the intense rain, that we could see the charred skeleton of the forest as crisply as the surface of an oil painting.
Broken Spectre (2022) was commissioned by NGV Melbourne and Serpentine Art Galleries with funding from VIA Art Fund, the Westridge Foundation, and Jack Shainman Gallery. A special artist’s book was co-published by 180 Studios, Converge45, and Loose Joints. Cinematography by Trevor Tweeten. Sound design by Ben Frost. Digital Color by Jerome Thelia. @ngvmelbourne@serpentineuk@jackshainman@180.studios@jointsloose@converge_45@jeromethelia
Ben Frost describes the crushing realization of peeling away layers of systemic delusion while working on a project about Palestine, and Suad Bushnaq asserts that there is no such thing as being apolitical in art. For them, the worry of being blacklisted is secondary to the privilege of contributing to a narrative that demands a reckoning with the narratives we were raised to believe.
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A US Air Force A-10 assault aircraft strafes Islamic State positions in the town of Dabiq, northern Syria, in 2015. Dabiq is of enormous symbolic importance to Daesh who believe it is where the final battle with the Infidel will take place. This is a rare look at an A-10 in active combat made with a long range thermal camera. The A-10 fires rounds that are 11 inches long, 65 rounds per second, which is faster than our thermal video frame rate (60fps re-encoded to 24), creating an optical effect that depicts the hail of live fire as a pulsing line almost like a laser, yet it’s one of the most terrifying machine guns ever made.
The following scene shows refugees being rescued off the coast of Libya by Croatian and Italian boats after weeks drifting at sea. One woman had given birth on the drifting raft without any kind of medical help, not even ibuprofen. You can see the heat signature of refugees being lifted to safety by Europeans in hazmat suits.
These are scenes from ‘Incoming’, 2017, a three screen video artwork with 7.1 surround sound designed by Ben Frost, cinematography by Trevor Tweeten, co-commissioned by NGV Melbourne & Barbican Art Gallery.
Peace in the Middle East.
Ben Frost & Francesco Fabris - ÓRÓAPULS / HARMONIC TREMOR
Nýlistasafnið / The Living Art Museum, Marshallhúsið, Reykjavík, IS
Harmonic Tremor emerges from several years of fieldwork in Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula where a series of eruptions between 2021 and 2023 reshaped the terrain. The work encounters the Earth as a sounding body, where landscape is not treated as a static object of observation but as an unfolding event. Sound functions here both as memory and as an immediate physical force; a document of geological rupture and a medium through which that rupture is re-animated directly into the present.
Loudspeakers diffuse a spatial composition woven from hours of field recordings. The sound in motion—gathered by the artists through various techniques including full spectrum analogue tape recordings, geophonic infrasound data collection, and intimate application of contact microphones placed directly to the newly cooled lava—moves like a tectonic drift, enveloping in a field of shifting resonance.
Over the course of the exhibition eight speaker cones, each filled with lava collected from the eruption sites, transform the exhibition space into a resonant chamber of geological sequence. Fine particles of lava placed in the speakers are gradually pushed outward through vibration, spilling across the floor. These moving grains form unstable drawings that slowly evolve and accumulate, exposing layers of sonically charged strata; reflecting a process of deep time that shapes the surrounding landscape not only of Iceland but beyond, through millennia. The landscape is not merely heard but is itself the act of hearing.
Curator: Þorsteinn Eyfjörð
Production: Francesco Fabris, Ben Frost, Þorsteinn Eyfjörð, Daniele Fabris
Graphic Design: Petter Spilde
Special thanks to: Daniele Fabris, Dustin O’halloran, Dorothea Olesen Halldórsdóttir, Hákon Bragason, Lawrence English / Room 40, Sunna Ástþórsdóttir, Stjórn og starfsfólk Nýlistasafnsins, Board and staff of the Living Art Museum, Icelandic Art Center
Nú fer hver að verða síðastur að sjá sýninguna Óróapúls eftir Ben Frost og Francesco Fabris. Sýningin er opin til og með 19. apríl.
Hlökkum til að skjá ykkur í Nýló, opnunartímar eru miðvikudag til sunnudags: 12–18.
Ekki missa af!
/ Last days to experience Harmonic Tremor by Ben Frost & Francesco Fabris. The exhibition will close on the 19th of April!
We can’t wait to see you at Nýlo, from Wednesday until Sunday: 12–18 pm.
Don’t miss it!
Myndir / Photographs by @sisters_lumiere
This scene from my film The Enclave (2013) shows M23 rebels in Virunga National Park before they advanced and took the city of Goma in 2012. The violence in eastern Congo is as bad today as it was when I filmed these scenes. These rebels have Tutsi leadership and are funded and equipped by Rwanda and Uganda, which want to steal Congo’s mineral wealth. We shot The Enclave on Kodak Aerochrome 16mm infrared film, with 100% organic photons reacting with good old silver halide, no AI involved. This is how the film, which was designed for camouflage detection, makes the world look. I love all the grain of 16mm Aerochrome, it’s very dreamlike and evocative.
The Enclave premiered at the Irish Pavilion in the Venice Art Biennale in 2013. Cinematography by @trevortweeten and sound design by @ethermachines with support from @easterncongo@jackshainman@cultureireland@aperturefnd@pulitzercenter and of course the Irish Department of Arts who selects the work to represent the country in Venice. Special thanks to curator and commissioner Anna O’Sullivan who worked so hard to pull our pavilion together and make it happen, against all the odds. @annainkilkenny
We’re excited to welcome Ben Frost to Panathēnea 2026, where he will join us on the Arts Stage.
Ben Frost (@ethermachines ) is a composer, sound artist, and stage director born in Melbourne, whose work spans studio recordings, live performance, installation, and collaborations across dance, theatre, and film. His practice explores sound as a powerful physical medium, often shaped by ecological and political themes.
His acclaimed studio albums include Theory of Machines, By The Throat, Aurora, The Centre Cannot Hold, and Scope Neglect, establishing him as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary experimental music.
Frost has composed for film and television projects including Sleeping Beauty, Palestine 36, Raised By Wolves directed by Ridley Scott, Die My Love by Lynne Ramsay, and the cult Netflix series Dark.
In 2011, Brian Eno selected him as his protégé as part of the Rolex Arts Initiative. His long-standing collaboration with artist Richard Mosse has resulted in major multi-channel installations such as The Enclave, Incoming, and Broken Spectre, presented in leading museums and festivals worldwide.
Frost has also written and directed two operas, The Wasp Factory and The Murder of Halit Yozgat, further expanding his work across disciplines and formats.
At Panathēnea 2026, Ben Frost will join the Arts Stage to share his approach to sound, storytelling, and immersive artistic expression.
Tickets are now open. Link in bio.
When countries are bombed in the Middle East or North Africa, this is what happens. The direct consequence is massive waves of asylum seekers seeking safer lives in Europe & elsewhere. To get there they are willing to risk everything & endure terrible trauma because it’s better than the terror they have already suffered. These shots were filmed in October 2016 in “the Jungle” refugee camp in Calais, France, as French riot police CRS & firefighters were dismantling the riddled infrastructure of the sprawling camp of asylum seekers hoping to make it to the UK. If the war with Iran continues, and especially if the US military puts boots on the ground, be prepared for another huge tidal wave of asylum seekers. There are already 762,000 refugees living in Iran who are likely to move towards Europe along with many Iranians if this war escalates. They will cross the mountains with Turkey and make their way to cross by sea at the Aegean or by land at Edirne. We know how this goes. And it destabilizes our societies as much as theirs. @ngvmelbourne@barbicancentre@ethermachines@trevortweeten@jackshainman@mack_publishing Incoming, 2017, by Richard Mosse, 52 mins and 12 seconds, three channel video art work with 7.1 surround sound.
