Fantasie#2

Audiovisual performance for objects burning in earth’s atmosphere, artificial intelligence and human musicians

With the help of an antenna facing south-west, the artists receive the signal from a French military radar system called GRAVES. This transmits radio waves from the ground to space; high atmospheric layers reflect them back to earth. This reflection registers each object as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere.

Two musicians perform these data in real time. The noise of the sky is translated to the range of the respective instrument. Atonal soft noises sound unanimously as long as no meteor, satellite particles, unknown flying object or other artifacts disturb the silence of an unharmed atmosphere. However, the impacts of the incandescent objects in the Earth’s atmosphere are set to music by both performers together. While one instrument receives the raw signals as notation, the notes of the second instrument are algorithmically alienated: an artificial intelligence searches the raw data for the tiniest possibilities of music, taking these unknown, non-worldly sounds as an occasion to dream of familiar melodies.

In a kind of musical relay, the piece is ideally performed over several hours, taking into account the timeless character of the meteorites, the universe and its potential inhabitants.

In collaboration with Christian Losert.
Special thanks to Ensemble Resonanz. 

Created as part of the fellowship program #bebeethoven, a project by PODIUM Esslingen on the occasion of the Beethoven Anniversary 2020, funded by Kulturstiftung des Bundes.

Coproduced by ZKM | Hertz-Lab. 

All pictures and video from performance @Radialsystem Berlin.
Performing musicians: Maria Reich (violin), Franziska Aller (contrabass), Cansu Tanrikulu (voice), James Banner (contrabass).