Thorolf Thuestad is a sound artist, composer, sound designer, performer, sculptur, sound and art technician.
Thorolf has worked extensively with stage arts, contemporary music and sound installations, and has among other things toured around the world with the New York Bessie award-winning art collective Verdensteatret. With Verdensteatret and Transiteatret he has taken part in projects that have received multiple Norwegian Hedda prizes, and a Gabler prize.
Thorolf has created sound design for full scale operas performed at The Norwegian Opera and internationally, and for main stage productions at The National Stage in Bergen. He has also scored a number of short and feature films.
He is much sought after as a specialist in the realisation of electronic and electroacoustic music, and has worked extensively with live electronics in contemporary music.
In the period 2004-2007 Thorolf held the position of director of sound and music at The Bergen Center for Electronic Arts (BEK). In 2011 he instigated the formation of the art collective An Index of Collisions, a Bergen based constellation that create kinetic sculptures, musical instruments, text, stage art and film, with the aim of creating a fertile interplay between these elements.
In 2015, with composer and performer Alwynne Pritchard, he formed Neither Nor a Bergen-based music-theatre company working from the premise of music as a cognitive process and way of thinking. Neither Nor addresses means of making music-driven theatre investigating causal relationships between music, language, the human body, stage action, mechanics, kinetics, electronics and environment. Neither Nor seeks to redefine the balance of power between music and the many social structures it inhabits.
Thorolf Thuestad has twice been awarded the Norwegian Arts Council one year artist’s stipend.
Thorolf Thuestad is also a member of Bergen’s BIT20 ensemble, with responsibility for sound and performance electronics in their productions.
Thorolf Thuestad holds a Phd. in artistic research awarded by the University of Bergen for the project Emotional machines - composing for unstable media that concluded with the stage performance and installation For one - for many - for all featuring 16 kinetic sculptures and three human performers.
