Medamothi Planum

für duo soufflé

For Bass flute, Bass clarinet & Clarinet, Computer Voice

ABOUT

Medamothi Planum is a plateau of Neptune’s moon Triton – it is a product of cryovolcanism and littered with countless dark spots, so-called “maculae”, from which once flowed huge quantities of ice lava. The plateau owes its name to the fictional island “Medamothi” from the novel “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by François Rabelais.

Medamothi Planum tells the story of a fictional and futile journey: The hibernating crew has been in a spaceship capsule for ages on their way to the Tritonian plane of Medamothi. Shortly before the ¿arrival?, ¿awakened? by the system, it immediately prepares its ¿landing? in the ¿plane Nowhere?…

The composition is the continuation of my compositional examination of the phenomenon of time. I have taken human coordination in weightlessness as a model, in order to explore how the extreme temporal stretching of the physiological processes of performance affects the perception of sound. Further, I have tried to imagine a sonification of hypothetical subconscious processes.

Belma Bešlić-Gál [02/2014]

Diesen und die zween folgenden Tag sahen sie weder neues Land
noch sonst was neues,
denn sie waren des Wegs schon öfter kommen.
Am vierten entdeckten sie ein Eiland namens Medamothi...

Gargantua und Pantagruel (François Rabelais)

DATA

Duration: 9‘
Instrumentation: Bass Flute, Clarinet/Bass Clarinet, Sound Projection [computer generated voice]
Equipment: Four-channel audio system

Performer of premiere: Duo Soufflé
Premiere: Salonkonzert – Duo Soufflé | Austrian Cultural Forum | Budapest, Hungary [08/04/2014]

Support: NASOM | BMUKK | Essl Museum – Kunst der Gegenwart | Austrian Cultural Forum [Budapest, Hungary]

List of performances