Schubert's "swan song" as music-theatre at the Armory Hall in NYC, conceived and directed by Claus Guth, with tenor Jonas Kaufmann and pianist Helmut Deutsch. I created musical interludes and sound compositions connecting the songs to one long experience.
Lure is an artistic research project I lead that explores machine learning in theater and music. We have explored a variety of machine learning techniques in combination with musical instruments, voice and narration. The artistic research transfers questions on the topics of human–machine interaction and artificial intelligence to the fields of theatre and music.
Most of my current blogging is happening here at the moment: https://MLure.art is a new central blog covering artistic research projects related to Machine Learning (= Artificial Intelligence) in theatre and music.
How I managed to get an audience for an independent experimental music-theatre piece and enjoyed applying creative entrepreneurial strategies to a publicly funded art project. I hope this report to be inspiring and motivating to fellow theatre makers. An adventure report.
Romantisation and dissection of our reality: "...at the same time we are made aware of the fact that we all too often do not want to see the other side of prosperity, poverty, loneliness, social inequality, especially in Munich, we surround ourselves with bulletproof glass 'in order not to break', as a passer-by remarked."
The pedestrian zone in front of the Kunsthalle Munich: There, a homeless person appears in the midst of lustfully shopping, well dressed people. In the hopelessness of her existence, she transfigures everything ordinary into art. Sounds from her memory fit into an orchestration of the urban sound space. Everything she hears becomes a global song in which, like Wagner's Isolde, she finds redemption through death and resurrection in love.
The change from linearity to non-linearity associated with digitalization is accompanied by a change in the perception of art and culture. We now have the chance to shape our co-existence with the algorithms, not only socially and politically, but also artistically.
Documentary film maker Felix Hentschel accompanied the production of the Mixed-Reality-Techno-Opera MAYA and held talks with the artists involved. The resulting film (ca. 40 min) illuminates the development of the Maya character and provides insights into the conception of the music and the design of the MAYA augmented reality app.
As the worlds first Augmented Reality opera, MAYA staged the former heating plant Munich-Aubing as a historic site. Through the AR-app on the own smartphone, the spectator betook himself in the perspective of a new civilization in the distant future, and looked back in amazement on the demise of our current civilization in the near future.
The standard theatre situation was reconfigured to an installation- and rave-like situation by means of the MAYA augmented reality App. Alive and present as an actor was only the mezzo-soprano Martina Koppelstetter. The digital world from which she originated was only visible through smartphones and AR. Experiencing this world through own smartphones, the audience strolled through the ruins and became the counterpart for MAYA with its presence, augmenting MAYA’s loneliness: MAYA had to sing against a mass of audience members gaping through their smartphones.