Nowhere Plain (Utopia Planitia)

DESCRIPTION

NOWHERE PLAIN (UTOPIA PLANITIA) is an intermedia music composition for violin, organ, electronics and space exploration. It uses visual media to create (anticipate) possible concert situations of the future. The main components are: Music composition (violin, organ, electronics), Video, Live Transmission, Costume Design, Lighting and Science (Space Exploration). The underlying concept mainly explores themes such as Communication, Progress, Nostalgia, Belief, Love and Loneliness.

The piece consists of three formal parts: an electronic Introductus, a Main and an electronic Exitus. The reduction focuses on the creation of minimalist sound bubbles. The flow is the overall gesture, whereas the sub-formal constructions (phrases that are actually openings and closings of structural cycles) simulate ebb and flow. The violinist is dressed in a purist, minimalist overall. The organist’s astronaut suit is not just a mere design element in terms of conceptual costume: It symbolizes a desperate desire for an autonomous micro-space, a kind of private biosphere that provides protection from the nightmares of the modern global society, from constant information overload. It symbolizes both physical and emotional isolation. A refuge from time.

SYNOPSIS

17/07/2065

For the first time in history, a worldwide audience can experience a live performance with musicians who do not live in the same world. The violinist is on Earth and the organist is on Mars, in an outpost in Utopia Valley. The organist starts his performance 3.2 minutes before the violinist, so that the audience can witness a simultaneous interplanetary performance, since the transmission signal takes about 3.2 minutes to travel the distance from Mars to Earth (on 07/17/2065 – about 56,000,000 km; speed of light = 299792458 m/s). Therefore the actors will never really play together. This duo is a temporal illusion. There is no shared real-time reality. The audience perceives a third time, the temporal suggestion of something that could be called NOW.

BACKGROUND

Information changes our existence. It shapes our opinions and convictions. Information enables us to perceive our world and understand our reality. It is an inherent building block of knowledge. Today, information’s instant availability is changing the world exponentially. It impacts everyone, generating complex identities and conglomerations of cultures and societies. Out of the morass of post-feudalism a spacefaring civilization emerges, one that is teleporting, “quantum computing”, ” nanotechnologizing”… From our ancestors’ point of view, we live in a world of miracles – the exponential technological development makes magic possible. Yet despite all of these developments, 21st century humans are more or less the same as their Ice Age predecessors – slaves to their instincts and archaic codes of behavior, unwilling and incapable of overcoming them. “We often fear what we do not understand. The strongest form of protection is knowledge.” But the path out of the darkness and ignorance into a brighter future is not foreseeable. Can science ever provide an answer to the question of the existence or non-existence of omnipotence? If we take the statements of the Apollo astronauts for granted, then their journey to the Moon and the realization that everything we know is based on knowledge acquired on Earth, while an omnipotent, endless unknown expands in all directions, led to a kind of catharsis. We can’t even begin to envision the sociological, cultural and psychological effects of the coming age of human space exploration. Nowhere Plain (Utopia Planitia) addresses these issues. The fragile organ as a symbol of the disintegration of faith in the age of post-capitalism and consumerism, Subbass 16 as a premonition and the violin as the voice of a frightened and insecure humanity that needs to transcend its old habits in order to embrace the fact that change is an inevitability. “On those who step into the same rivers, other and different waters flow.” – Heraclitus