Blikk is a room-size collaborative "multimedia" artwork that consists of kinetic sculptures, lights, laser, and audio. The work was commissioned by and first performed at Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK) in 1970. Irma Salo Jæger (kinetic sculpture), Jan Erik Vold (texts, voice), and Sigurd Berge (music) were the main artistic collaborators, and three engineers from Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt - Halvor Heier, Birger Komedal, and Harald Schiøtz - were brought in to realize the artistic visions with their technical expertise (light and audio synchronization programming and development of the control system; laser drawing).
Due to its technical complexities and scale, combined with the lack of documentation, Blikk has been presented to the public only as a partial or modified version since 1970; for example, both "Nordisk 60-tall" exhibition at HOK in 1990 and "Kunst 2" exhibition at MFS in 2005 featured a single cube, with modified or absent original light and audio settings.
Nasjonalmuseet's project of restoring Blikk in full scale, as a part of the permanent exhibition at the new museum building of Nasjonalmuseet in 2020, corresponds with the 50th anniversary of the commission and unveiling of this seminal work at HOK. The project aims to recreate Blikk in full scale, with all the elements comprising the 1970 original version, based on (the research of) the records and resources currently available.
As the surviving material and technical components and documentation from the original production are scarce, the recreation project has become in fact a very extensive research and restoration project, in which the exhibition technicians, conservators, curators and external experts collaborate in filling the gaps among the remaining records and knowledge of the work and the elusive working of the original. Therefore, a recognition and need for documenting the components and process of the project as well as some guiding operation principles have emerged as an anchoring point for coordinating dissonant voices and views underway.