Utopia Planitia
Belma Beslic
Intermedial music concert of a potential future, 2008
DESCRIPTION
For the first time in history, a worldwide audience can witness a live performance in a direct TV broadcast with musicians who don’t inhabitate the same world. The violin player is on Earth, and the organist is on Mars, in an outpost located in Utopia valley.
The organist starts his performance 3.2 minutes prior to the violinist, This way that the auditory can witness a simultaneous interplanetary performance – transmission signals need some 3,2 minutes to cross the distance from Mars to Earth ( on 17.07.2065 – ca. 56.000.000 km; speed of light = 299792458 m/s ). Therefore, the performers will never actually play together. His present is her past and her present is his future… This duo is a temporal illusion.
A mutual real-time reality doesn´t exist. The audience perceives a third time, the temporal insinuation of something that one might call NOW.
The music composition formally consists of three parts: electronic Introitus, ac/el. Main and electronic Exitus. The composition technique focuses on creation of minimal sound bubbles. The general form is flow, while subformal structures ( phrases which are actually openings and closings of the formal and dynamical circles) are simulating ebb and flow.
The violinist is dressed in a purist, minimalist suit. The astronaut suit which the organist wears is not just conceptual costume design: it symbolizes the urgent need for an independent micro space, a personal biosphere which protects from the nightmares of the modern world’s society, from the constant bombardment of information. It is a symbol of bodily and emotional isolation. An escape from time.
OVERVIEW
Duration: ca. 16’
Video requirements: version 1 – video projector plus projection screen, vga cable (5m or 10m);
version 2: same as above, plus video camera for live transmission
Audio requirements: PA stereo system (loudspeakers, stage mixer, cd player)
Light & Scenography: self-provided
Premiere: Hörfest, Graz, May 4th, 2008
Performers: Annelie Gahl (Vl.), Klaus Lang (Organ), Belma Beslic (electronics)