Sonntag, 10.10.2004, 19 Uhr Glockenhaus, Eröffnungskonzert

WATT?

plays:

***The Longest Mauvais Quart d'Heure***

in which the theatricality of live electronics is being explored through combining new technology with traditional instruments, creating a surprising sound world full of abstract electronic music, poppy songs (sometimes in microtonal modes) and unheard improvisation.

'The Machine Stops', a short story written before World War One by E.M. Forster, serves as the main source of inspiration.

This short story tells about mankind, living underground in small hexagonal cells after a big -not specified- disaster has destroyed the face of the earth. People are kept alive by a machine, a machine they have to obey and which they worship because it supplies all things they need to survive, including communication. These means of communication, frighteningly so, look very much like today's world wide web. Rebelling against the machine, that does not function as perfect as everyone would like, means asking for trouble......

B monster-movies, Beckett's shorter plays and old-fashioned science fiction supply models for the imagery of this performance in which time no longer linearly proceeds.

The most important software used by WATT? is LiSa, a live sampling program developed by STEIM Amsterdam and BigEye, a video-to-MIDI program also by STEIM.

Forster's hexagonal cell has been built as a piece of staging that functions as the electronic instrument of the vocalist, who resides in that cell for quite a bit of the performance, initially without the audience knowing it. The vocalist's image, taken in by a digital camera placed inside the cell, is not only being used to be projected in the concert space, forcing the audience to commit a very uncomfortable kind of voyeurism, but also to trigger (live) sampled sounds. This puts a fantastic musical instrument and improvisation tool at her disposal, which strongly links up with Forster's descriptions of human life in his short story mentioned above.

'The Longest Mauvais 1/4 d'Heure' has a duration of ca.70 minutes (no interval). The performance space preferably is a 'black-box'.