As always, Roskilde Festival aims to bring the participants much more than just music and mud

What do a maverick artist and a Nobel Prize winner have in common with a bunch of mud-loving music fans? All will be attending this year’s Roskilde Festival, which puts as much emphasise on humanitarian work as hard rock.

Danish conceptual artist Kristian von Hornsleth will be visiting the Roskilde festival as part of his Deep Storage Project.

Hornsleth previously came to prominence when he convinced the villagers of a Ugandan village to all legally change their name to Hornsleth in return for livestock as part of an art project. The artist also launched a project buying up stock in arms companies, with the proceeds going to relief organisations.

This time around, the 46-year-old artist will be collecting DNA samples from willing volunteers attending the festival. Hair and blood samples taken by trained personnel from 800 participants, together with DNA samples from around the world, will be installed in a five metre tall sculpture to be placed at the deepest part of the world’s ocean in 2010.

The futuristic and angular sculpture will be placed in the 11,000 metre deep Mariana Trench, 200 miles off of Guam Island between Japan and the Philippines, next January.

Hornsleth’s aim is that in thousands of years from now the DNA of the volunteers will still be intact, buried in the centre of the Earth, while life above will have vastly changed.

‘The sculpture looks as it does because it should not resemble something organic – its made up of triangles and sharp points. The idea is that 10,000 years from now, when someone sails by with their deep sea sonar, they’ll see something down there and retrieve it. The people who donated DNA could be regenerated and maybe even come to Roskilde again,’ Hornsleth explained to public broadcaster DR.

Each volunteer who donates a couple of drops of blood will also be given a signed certificate of participation containing their own blood.

If they’re not too woozy from taking part in the art project, they can then head over to the main Orange Stage on Sunday evening to check out what is expected to be an impassioned speech by Dr. Muhammed Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner. The Nobel laureate will take to the stage before final headline act Coldplay, to spread his message of social business models, which he terms "capitalism with a human face."

Yunus was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work with Grameen Bank in setting up a system of micro credit loans to poor entrepreneurs in Bangladesh in the 70s and is in Denmark this week to set up a micro foundation for future entrepreneurs.

However, for those not taking part in futuristic art projects or being inspired by Nobel laureates to make a change, festival goers can still make a difference by taking part in the humanitarian and climate change initiatives promoted by the Roskilde Festival Society organisers.

Apart from the Ten Green Footsteps programme that encourages festival goers to recycle, avail of public transport, and use pedal power to charge up their mobile phones, the festival has also gone greener this year.

In cooperation with energy company Vattenfall, which has purchased windpower certificates and carbon quotas, the festival has ensured that the 400,000 kilowatts of electricity used during the festival are carbon neutral.

And if all that isn’t enough for the discerning festival goer, they will be happy to know that any unwanted reusable sleeping bags, tents and other equipment will benefit children in Belarus; or they could take up the festival’s offer of a free beer for every bag of rubbish collected at the Roskilde grounds over the week-long event.