I’m Kjartan Abel, and I became an artist at 30 by accident, with an umbrella and some creative lies about software.
I was working as a webmaster at Fast Search & Transfer when a former colleague called – could I come fix the computer lab at this art school? Walking through Strykejernet, I had one of those lightning-bolt moments: This is what I’m supposed to be doing. I’d never liked art because I’d never seen art that was technology-first. This place was different.
I quit my job and applied to art school. For my portfolio, I needed ten pieces. One was called “Araply” – a speaker mounted on an umbrella that played random fragments from an Ari Behn audiobook. I told people I’d written software to select the clips, but really I’d just chopped up a radio interview into mp3 files and set them to shuffle in Winamp. People loved it. The wordplay (paraply/Araply/Anodorhynchus – I thought I was so clever), the absurdity of standing under an umbrella listening to scattered stories – it worked.
That umbrella taught me everything: take everyday objects, add some technology, see what happens.
These days I’m back where I started in some ways – doing web development and museum work at Østfoldmuseene. It feels like Groundhog Day sometimes, except now I’m the person they call when they need impossible things to work. Need to hack ten vintage telephones so visitors can pick them up and hear stories? I’ll add some Adafruit boards. Want to turn a WWII bunker into a VR experience? Give me a 360° camera and a weekend. Building an interactive game where kids use cipher wheels and UV flashlights to help Jewish families escape to Sweden? Let me fire up the Python code and dust off my Arduino skills.
I’ve made hamsters into unwitting surveillance subjects (until one escaped during a party). I’ve turned receipt machines into random music generators. I built a waiting room where you could meet your future self and get a ticket to prove it happened. I made people walk along cassette tape stuck to gallery walls to hear a recording – no way to pause without stopping entirely, like modern life itself.
But somehow the museum work feels like the natural evolution of that umbrella moment. I’m still taking ordinary things – old phones, historical artifacts, empty rooms – and making them tell stories in ways they were never designed to do. The difference is now I actually know how to make the software work instead of faking it.
Kjartan Abel’s Creative Philosophy
I believe creativity thrives when it’s shared openly. This is why I give my music away under a Creative Commons license—because art should be a conversation, not a commodity. It’s about empowering others to build on my work, remix it, and make it their own.
My art projects explore the dynamic relationship between art, technology, time, and space. I often use interactive installations and sound art to create immersive experiences that challenge our perception of the world. Recurring themes include:
- Temporal Distortion: Disrupting the linear flow of time to reflect on memory, the future, and the present.
- Spatial Reconfiguration: Redefining the boundaries of space, blurring the line between the physical and the digital.
- The Poetics of Waiting: Examining the act of waiting as a powerful moment of anticipation and presence.
Kjartan Abel’s professional Expertise
As an Accessibility Advocate and a Digital Consultant, I have over 20 years of experience creating user-friendly web solutions for the cultural sector. My core competencies include:
- Web Development: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, WordPress, eZ Publish, Umbraco.
- CMS Management: Content structure, editorial strategy, and content production (text, photography, video).
- Accessibility: Universal design (WCAG 2.1) and user experience.
- Creative Consulting: Cross-disciplinary collaboration, AI-supported tools, and training.
Kjartan Abel’s education
- University College London (UCL), Slade School of Fine Art: MFA in Fine Art Media
- Kingston University: BA(Hons) Fine Art, First Class Honours
- Strykejernet Art School: Foundation in Visual Arts
- NISS (Nordic Institute for Stage and Studio): Audio Engineering
Twenty years of “real” jobs taught me that the best art happens when you know how to make things actually function. The umbrella was just the beginning.