My interactive text piece at oerum.org is an online supplement to FORSTADIER / PRECURSORS, a duo show with Aske Thiberg at Ringsted Galleriet and Midt- og Vestsjællands Hospital, on view until 11 April 2026.
A text cycles through 44 sentences, each beginning with the word “blå”. The word appears for two seconds at the start of each line, then fades, leaving only what blue is this time: the hospital’s colour, the stamps in the passport, the diode blinking on the router when no one is there. Click or wait, and the text flips like a calendar page. The background shifts between blue tones. Subtle animations respond to content: underwater caustics for swimming pools and waves, slow light rays for hospital rooms and screens, gentle pulses for blinking diodes and emergency lights.
The work is part of Leddyrsomsorg, a project imagining a future Danish healthcare system where giant blue woodlice replace AI and automation. The text catalogues the blues that surround care and its absence: the face mask in the cupboard that has expired, the plastic glove for the dishwasher and illness, the light in the waiting room and the public toilet. Blue appears in medical uniforms, in veins under skin, in the newborn who is not breathing. It appears in bureaucratic stamps, access cards not yet collected, travel cards that no longer work. It appears in domestic debris: cheap detergent, toilet cleaner, worn towels inherited from a grandmother.
Blue is the rarest colour in flowers and animals. Blue was the most expensive pigment in the Middle Ages. Blue is the blood of ancient horseshoe crabs. The text moves between natural history, institutional surfaces, and the objects of everyday life, finding blue in each. The final line states: blue is not yet the woodlouse.
The interface uses vanilla JavaScript with no external libraries. Each word is a separate DOM element. The word “blå” triggers a timed fade animation. Background colours are drawn from a palette of deep blues with slight teal and indigo variations. Four animation types overlay the background based on textual content, running slowly throughout each slide. All processing runs client-side. Available in both Danish and English.
FORSTADIER / PRECURSORS. On view until 11 April 2026. Ringsted Galleriet, Bøllingsvej 15 / Midt- og Vestsjællands Hospital, Bøllingsvej 30, 4100 Ringsted.
