MEDIATHEK

A cooperation of Deutsche Oper Berlin and phase7 performing arts

The Deutsche Oper Berlin opened the Season 2013/2014 on the 22nd of August in cooperation with the Berlin based artist network phase7 with the Opera HIMMELSMECHANIK – eine entortung (Celestial Mechanics – displaced and relocated).

Part one leads the audience right into Mauricio Kagel´s surreal 8-minute-composition from 1965. The sky seems out of whack: wrongly bent rainbows, half-moons hit by lightening and upwards falling stars populate his score. This naivety can also be found in the instrumentation and stage setting. Percussionists using steel plates and wind machine as well as paper and wooden pieces are the only musicians in this part.

A world premiere forms part two of the evening: Christian Steinhäuser´s new composition DASS DIE WELT VERRÜCKT SEIN MAG. It starts within a walkable labyrinth where audience and singers meet passing through the installation of video and sound art which transports the perceptual disorder architecturally and makes the audience experience it on their own bodies. The last part is staged in an architecture of 80 speakers. By means of wave field synthesis (WFS) the idea of a dilapidated sky structure is transported into our digital reality. Inspired by research results of CERN, the libretto steers spectators and singers towards the search of deciphering cryptic world machinery

Developed in joint venture with IOSONO, a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT), phase7 creates sound installations with realistic, three-dimensional soundscapes that give an entirely new sensory experience. Melodies and sound surfaces surround the listener from all sides and seem to interact, penetrate and almost make the listener become part of the ensemble. This completely new auditory experience is based on wave field synthesis, WFS, which dissolves the previously valid principle of the sweet spot. Individually recorded sound sources are completely rearranged in a virtual environment and flexibly manipulated in the playback. This creates new challenges in the compositional process and gives radically new possibilities for sound design in artistic productions.