Item NMC/2081C - Control My Bodiless Form: GOODBYE FROM CYBERSPACE

Key Information

Reference code

NMC/2081C

Title

Control My Bodiless Form: GOODBYE FROM CYBERSPACE

Date(s)

  • 2022 (Creation)

Level of description

Item

Extent

1 item

Content and Structure

Scope and content

Part 3 of video triptych. Control My Bodiless Form is a video triptych melding Swedish folk music with stories from cyberspace. The three audio-visual pieces offer a satirical and absurd look at the numbness, joy, and horror that exists online. In July 2022, an anonymous survey was sent out via social media. It asked things like:

What’s the worst interaction you’ve had in cyberspace?

What’s the loveliest interaction you’ve had in cyberspace?

What do other people do on the internet that you find embarrassing?

What have you done on the internet that you regret?

For anyone who has been on the internet, this next part won’t be all that shocking. Responses were often long paragraphs, recounting experiences of grooming, doxxing, antisemitism, stalking, trolling, homophobia, racism, and self harm. There were also stories of finding community, inspiration, creativity, even romantic love. Stories of disassociation and apathy. The responses were woven into lyrics, and put to three pieces of music. The result is three audio-visual pieces, filled with the warmth of 20-layer harmonies, cow herding calls, organs, and accordions, as well as the menacing detachment of AI voices and Weircore aesthetics. A strange amalgamation of the natural and digital, examining what on earth is happening to us in cyberspace.

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General Information

Name of creator

(fl c2020s)

Biographical history

Sofia Mellander, who also goes by the stage name Salt, is a sound artist, musician, and filmmaker. Her work spans from pop music to hymns, to binaural experiences and documentaries. Themes found in the work include incels, assisted suicide, sex, and how insane it was that Brian from the Beach Boys wrote that song ‘Hey Little Tomboy’. Her practice at GSA ventures into more experimental areas, with less rigid narrative and sonic structures than she’s previously explored. She has an MDes Sound for the Moving Image from GSA's School of Simulation & Visualisation and was awarded the Foulis Medal in 2022.

Mellander was born in Stockholm, Sweden but has lived in Miami (USA), Costa-Rica, Ghana, Germany, England and Scotland since she was four. She currently works and performs in Glasgow.

Archival history

Custodial history

Purchased from Sofia Mellander, Apr 2022.

Physical Description and Conditions of Use

Conditions governing access

Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections are open for research by appointment. For further details, please refer to our Access Policy @ https://gsaarchives.net/policies

Conditions governing reproduction

Application for permission to reproduce should be submitted to The Archives and Collections at The Glasgow School of Art.

Reproduction subject to usual conditions: educational use and condition of material.

For further details, please refer to our Reprographic Service Guide @ https://gsaarchives.net/policies

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Physical Description

MP4 file.

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Catalogued by Michelle Kaye, Collections Lead, Apr 2025.

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