Lars-Gunnar Bodin

Swedish composer and visual artist Lars-Gunnar Bodin was a pioneer of electro-acoustic music and text-sound compositions, who also educated through teaching and through radio presentations, was an integral part of electronic music's presence in the Fylkingen society, and was director of the Electronic Music Studio (EMS). Bodin's early works and his involvement — which includes three years as Chairman — in Fylkingen (a society for the promotion of new art forms since the '30s) were crucial to the development of electronic music in Sweden. The Stockholm-born composer studied with Lennart Wenström during the last half of the '50s and first became involved at the Fylkingen society in the early '60s. Bodin was already using computer processing in his visual art when he met up with Göran Sundqvist; the process improved as the two collaborated during the '60s and their work was part of the L´Artiste et L´Ordinateur exhibition. With fellow Swedish composer Bengt-Emil Johnson, Bodin began staging concerts and festivals of text-sound composition — works of music in which language and voice are used for their sound, not their meaning. He and Johnson were among the first to write in this mode, along with Sten Hanson and others. One compilation documenting their work is The Pioneers: Five Text-Sound Artists (Phono Sueco, 1992). Bodin wrote electro-acoustic music, instrumental theater music, multimedia works, compositions utilizing tape in live performance, and the text that he used in many of his pieces. Two notable works are "Commenting on Traces I" (1970), and "In Clouds" (1972-1976). Lars-Gunnar Bodin was composer-in-residence at California's Mills College in 1972, and became the Director of Stockholm's EMS in the late '70s.