Le Sacre du Printemps
Interactive 3D Performance
KLAUS OBERMAIER, concept, artistic direction and choreography
ARS ELECTRONICA FUTURELAB, interactive design and technical development
JULIA MACH, dance
ALOIS HUMMER, sound design
WOLFGANG FRIEDINGER, lighting design
A production of Brucknerhaus Linz and Ars Electronice Future Lab
Management: karsten witt musik management/Shaksfin Asia
"The discrepancy between subjective and seemingly objective perception produced by stereoscopic camera systems, where the images are filtered and manipulated by computers, constitutes the central idea behind my staging of Le Sacre du Printemps.
The epoch prior to World War I, the time in which Stravinsky composed Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), was characterised by an ecstatic desire to experience the intensity of life, an emotion that would later mutate into an equally euphoric enthusiasm for war. Logically, Stravinsky conceived Sacre as an orgiastic mass ballet.
The dissolution of social structures is reflected in the dissolution of conventional developments and structures in the composition with its fragmentary, block-like lining up of movements, abrupt shifts, polytonality and polyrhythm. This, together with Nijinsky's
choreography, resulted in one of the largest premiere scandals of music history.
Almost a hundred years later, the issue of the day is question of authenticity of experience in the light of the ongoing virtualisation of our habitats. It is the dissolution of our sensuous perception, of the space-time continuum, the fading dividing line between real and virtual,
fact and fiction that takes us to the limits of our existence.
The immersion of the "chosen one", her fusion with music and space, is characterized as an up-to-date "sacrifice" for an uncertain future. This is a metaphor for deliverance and the anticipation of an eternal happiness, or at least a new dimension of perception promised to
us by new technologies and old religions.
In addition, Le Sacre du Printemps looks at the complex relationship between music, dance and space. In conventional interpretations of Sacre there is simply choreography and dance. In this production, the dynamics and structure of the music interactively transform the
virtual presence of the dancer and her avatars in a type of "meta-choreography". Stereoscopic projections create an immersive environment, allowing the audience to participate substantially more closely in this communication than in traditional theatre settings.
Stereo cameras and a complex computer system transfer the dancer Julia Mach into a virtual three-dimensional space. Time strata and unusual perspectives overlay one another and multiply, enabling a completely new perception of the body and its sequences of
movements. Real-time generated virtual spaces communicate and interact with the dancer. The human body is once more the interface between reality and virtuality.
The aesthetics range from the rune-like characters of the Glagolitsa, the oldest known Slavic alphabet, to matrix-like spaces, the surfaces formed visibly by the same binary or hexadecimal code, by which they are generated in real-time.
The entire orchestra is integrated in the interactive process, by means of 32 microphones. Musical motifs, individual voices and instruments influence the form, movement and complexity of both the 3D projections of the virtual space and those of the dancer. Music is no longer merely a starting point, but moreover the completion of the
choreography."
Klaus Obermaier
THE ARTISTS
For almost two decades media-artist, director and composer KLAUS OBERMAIER has been creating innovative works in the area of dance, music, theatre and new media, highly acclaimed by critics and audiences.
His performances are shown at major festivals and
theatres throughout Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia. He has composed for ensembles including the Kronos Quartet, Deutsche Kammerphil-harmonie Bremen, Art Ensemble of
Chicago and the Balanescu Quartet.
His numerous works also include projects like interactive installations, video art, web projects, computer music and radio plays as well as large intermedia outdoor events for tens of thousands of people.
He gives lectures at international universities and institutions and has been a visiting professor at the University IUAV of Venice since 2006, where he teaches new media in dance, music and theatre performances. www.exile.at
JULIA MACH is a freelance dancer. After completing her diploma at the Vienna State Opera Ballet School in 1997, she studied Philosophy at the University of Vienna and then went on to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance at the Hogeschool voor Muzeik en dans in Rotterdam, Holland.
In 2002, she received a danceWebEurope scholarship for contemporary dance. Her first engagement at the Opera House in Graz, Austria, was followed by freelance work in Vienna including the collaboration with Chris Haring (liquid loft), Liz King (Tanztheater Wien), Georg
Blaschke, Rose Breuss, Doris Ener and Roderich Madl (Pilottanzt), Elio Gervasi, and Catherine Guerin. At the same time Julia Mach completed her Masters degree in Movement Research at the Bruckner University in Linz. She is currently nominated for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.
Following her participation in the award-winning production of the Teatr Dada von Bzdülöw (Gdansk) Eden, her own production Visitores received its Polish premiere in November 2007 and was further performed at the Teatr Atelier in Sopot and the Klub ZAK in Gdansk.
Her second historical reconstruction of an original solo choreography, Grete Wiesenthals' choreography for Death and the Maiden, was presented in July 2008.
Julia Mach is further collaborating on the production of Rose Breuss' Paradise Lost - Exit Eden. It received its premiere at the Bregenzer Festspielen in August 2008. Further performances will be presented at the Tanzquartier Wien in October 2008.
In fall 2008, Julia Mach will be Artist-in-Residence at the dance-identity Festival in Austria, where she will work on one of her new projects.
ARS ELECTRONICA FUTURELAB
RAINER EILMSTEINER, Portfolio manager for music events and theatre
CHRISTINE SUGRUE, Interactive design and technical development
MATTHIAS BAUER, Interactive design and technical development
Ars Electronica Futurelab is based in Linz and is continually redefining mankind's interrelationship with computers. The institution's productive activities are centered on media art, but the diversity of its projects are powerful testimony to the Futurelab's creative competence contributed to joint ventures with partners in the private sector, collaborative R&D undertakings and cooperative associations with academic institutions.
The world of the Ars Electronica Futurelab is interactive, multimedial and characterized by completely new approaches to conceptualisation and design.
Hardware and software that can be used in an easy, intuitive way, superb design and the consummate harmony of interaction and content are at the very top of the Ars Electronica Futurelab's R&D agenda. In concrete terms, the Ars Electronica Futurelab carries out projects across the entire new media spectrum commissioned by corporate clients and in collaboration with R&D associates and cultural institutions.
The Futurelab has collaborated with associates in Austria, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the USA. The permanent headquarters of these global activities is located in the Urfahr section of Linz, Austria, featuring computer infrastructure, studios, offices and workshops in
which up to 40 staffers carry out project-related work.
Through its ties to the Ars Electronica Festival, the world's largest and most important festival for art, technology and society, the Futurelab maintains close contacts with leading members of the international media elite.
KLAUS OBERMAIER, concept, artistic direction and choreography
ARS ELECTRONICA FUTURELAB, interactive design and technical development
JULIA MACH, dance
ALOIS HUMMER, sound design
WOLFGANG FRIEDINGER, lighting design
A production of Brucknerhaus Linz and Ars Electronice Future Lab
Management: karsten witt musik management/Shaksfin Asia
"The discrepancy between subjective and seemingly objective perception produced by stereoscopic camera systems, where the images are filtered and manipulated by computers, constitutes the central idea behind my staging of Le Sacre du Printemps.
The epoch prior to World War I, the time in which Stravinsky composed Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), was characterised by an ecstatic desire to experience the intensity of life, an emotion that would later mutate into an equally euphoric enthusiasm for war. Logically, Stravinsky conceived Sacre as an orgiastic mass ballet.
The dissolution of social structures is reflected in the dissolution of conventional developments and structures in the composition with its fragmentary, block-like lining up of movements, abrupt shifts, polytonality and polyrhythm. This, together with Nijinsky's
choreography, resulted in one of the largest premiere scandals of music history.
Almost a hundred years later, the issue of the day is question of authenticity of experience in the light of the ongoing virtualisation of our habitats. It is the dissolution of our sensuous perception, of the space-time continuum, the fading dividing line between real and virtual,
fact and fiction that takes us to the limits of our existence.
The immersion of the "chosen one", her fusion with music and space, is characterized as an up-to-date "sacrifice" for an uncertain future. This is a metaphor for deliverance and the anticipation of an eternal happiness, or at least a new dimension of perception promised to
us by new technologies and old religions.
In addition, Le Sacre du Printemps looks at the complex relationship between music, dance and space. In conventional interpretations of Sacre there is simply choreography and dance. In this production, the dynamics and structure of the music interactively transform the
virtual presence of the dancer and her avatars in a type of "meta-choreography". Stereoscopic projections create an immersive environment, allowing the audience to participate substantially more closely in this communication than in traditional theatre settings.
Stereo cameras and a complex computer system transfer the dancer Julia Mach into a virtual three-dimensional space. Time strata and unusual perspectives overlay one another and multiply, enabling a completely new perception of the body and its sequences of
movements. Real-time generated virtual spaces communicate and interact with the dancer. The human body is once more the interface between reality and virtuality.
The aesthetics range from the rune-like characters of the Glagolitsa, the oldest known Slavic alphabet, to matrix-like spaces, the surfaces formed visibly by the same binary or hexadecimal code, by which they are generated in real-time.
The entire orchestra is integrated in the interactive process, by means of 32 microphones. Musical motifs, individual voices and instruments influence the form, movement and complexity of both the 3D projections of the virtual space and those of the dancer. Music is no longer merely a starting point, but moreover the completion of the
choreography."
Klaus Obermaier
THE ARTISTS
For almost two decades media-artist, director and composer KLAUS OBERMAIER has been creating innovative works in the area of dance, music, theatre and new media, highly acclaimed by critics and audiences.
His performances are shown at major festivals and
theatres throughout Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia. He has composed for ensembles including the Kronos Quartet, Deutsche Kammerphil-harmonie Bremen, Art Ensemble of
Chicago and the Balanescu Quartet.
His numerous works also include projects like interactive installations, video art, web projects, computer music and radio plays as well as large intermedia outdoor events for tens of thousands of people.
He gives lectures at international universities and institutions and has been a visiting professor at the University IUAV of Venice since 2006, where he teaches new media in dance, music and theatre performances. www.exile.at
JULIA MACH is a freelance dancer. After completing her diploma at the Vienna State Opera Ballet School in 1997, she studied Philosophy at the University of Vienna and then went on to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance at the Hogeschool voor Muzeik en dans in Rotterdam, Holland.
In 2002, she received a danceWebEurope scholarship for contemporary dance. Her first engagement at the Opera House in Graz, Austria, was followed by freelance work in Vienna including the collaboration with Chris Haring (liquid loft), Liz King (Tanztheater Wien), Georg
Blaschke, Rose Breuss, Doris Ener and Roderich Madl (Pilottanzt), Elio Gervasi, and Catherine Guerin. At the same time Julia Mach completed her Masters degree in Movement Research at the Bruckner University in Linz. She is currently nominated for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.
Following her participation in the award-winning production of the Teatr Dada von Bzdülöw (Gdansk) Eden, her own production Visitores received its Polish premiere in November 2007 and was further performed at the Teatr Atelier in Sopot and the Klub ZAK in Gdansk.
Her second historical reconstruction of an original solo choreography, Grete Wiesenthals' choreography for Death and the Maiden, was presented in July 2008.
Julia Mach is further collaborating on the production of Rose Breuss' Paradise Lost - Exit Eden. It received its premiere at the Bregenzer Festspielen in August 2008. Further performances will be presented at the Tanzquartier Wien in October 2008.
In fall 2008, Julia Mach will be Artist-in-Residence at the dance-identity Festival in Austria, where she will work on one of her new projects.
ARS ELECTRONICA FUTURELAB
RAINER EILMSTEINER, Portfolio manager for music events and theatre
CHRISTINE SUGRUE, Interactive design and technical development
MATTHIAS BAUER, Interactive design and technical development
Ars Electronica Futurelab is based in Linz and is continually redefining mankind's interrelationship with computers. The institution's productive activities are centered on media art, but the diversity of its projects are powerful testimony to the Futurelab's creative competence contributed to joint ventures with partners in the private sector, collaborative R&D undertakings and cooperative associations with academic institutions.
The world of the Ars Electronica Futurelab is interactive, multimedial and characterized by completely new approaches to conceptualisation and design.
Hardware and software that can be used in an easy, intuitive way, superb design and the consummate harmony of interaction and content are at the very top of the Ars Electronica Futurelab's R&D agenda. In concrete terms, the Ars Electronica Futurelab carries out projects across the entire new media spectrum commissioned by corporate clients and in collaboration with R&D associates and cultural institutions.
The Futurelab has collaborated with associates in Austria, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the USA. The permanent headquarters of these global activities is located in the Urfahr section of Linz, Austria, featuring computer infrastructure, studios, offices and workshops in
which up to 40 staffers carry out project-related work.
Through its ties to the Ars Electronica Festival, the world's largest and most important festival for art, technology and society, the Futurelab maintains close contacts with leading members of the international media elite.
Julia Mach
Klaus Obermaier & Ars Electronica Futurelab
Klaus Obermaier & Ars Electronica Futurelab
Klaus Obermaier
Klaus Obermaier & Ars Electronica Futurelab
Klaus Obermaier & Ars Electronica Futurelab
Julia Mach
Klaus Obermaier & Ars Electronica Futurelab
Klaus Obermaier & Ars Electronica Futurelab