multimedia
Simulation - Part One (2023)
Das Werk, das eigens für das IEMA-Ensemble 2022/23 entstanden ist, wurde bei ›cresc … – Biennale für aktuelle Musik Frankfurt Rhein Main‹ uraufgeführt. Ali gibt ihrer Komposition eine Vorgeschichte, die von einem einschneidenden Ereignis ausgeht: der atomaren Katastrophe. Was oft genug als Endpunkt der Menschheit vorgestellt wird, verwandelt sich hier in einen Anfang: »Inmitten des nuklearen Fallouts mutiert die Natur in einer Weise, die ein äußerst unwahrscheinliches Ereignis hervorbringt: einen unsterblichen Menschen. Die Strahlung verursacht Anomalien in der DNA einer Frau. Das Ergebnis ist, dass sie die einzige menschliche Überlebende auf der Erde ist.« Ali stellt sich vor, wie diese unsterbliche Frau sich nach und nach immer mehr Wissen aneignet. Letztlich hat sie sämtliches menschliches Wissen in sich vereint und dieses noch erweitert. Angetrieben wird sie dabei von einem zutiefst menschlichen Verlangen: »Ihre Hoffnung ist, dass sie eines Tages nicht mehr allein sein wird, wenn sie sich nur genug anstrengt. Ihre Hoffnung war, dass sie eines Tages in der Lage sein würde, Simulationen von Menschen zu erstellen...« An dieser Stelle setzt ›Simulation – Part One‹ ein, eine Komposition für großes Ensemble, Licht und Schatten und Elektronik. Ausgehend von Nick Bostroms Simulationstheorie fragt das Werk nach Möglichkeiten mit der existenziellen Bedrohung durch einen Atomkrieg umzugehen und sich eine Zukunft danach vorzustellen. Dabei greift Ali unter anderem auch Platons Höhlengleichnis und die Symbolik der antiken ikonografischen Kunst auf. In ihrer Komposition konstruiert sie ein neues, geschlossenes Universum, das die tiefen psychologischen Ängste und Hoffnungen unserer Zeit in einem gemeinsamen Ritual zu vergegenwärtigen sucht.
Zara Ali | Concept, Music, Light & Stage, Choreography, Directing
Phoebe Bognár | Flute, Choreography
Jeanne Degos | Voice, Choreography
Xizi Wang | Conductor
Tim Abramczik | Sound Direction
Drew Gilchrist | Clarinet; Tobias Krieger | Trumpet; Michael Martinez | Trombone; Ying-Chen Chuang | Drumset; Jaroslav Novosyolov | Keyboard, Piano; Miria Sailer | Violin; Miho Kawai | Viola; Clara Franz | Cello; Riverton Vilela Alves | Electric Bass
Live performance in KünstlerInnenhaus Mousonturm as part of the cresc. Festival.
The trailer is below and the complete work can be found on YouTube in 4k.
The Unnamed (2022)
The Unnamed is a composition created from a multitude of noises one might hear in a library. A library is a house of books for all and, for some, a sanctuary for study and contemplation. A library is usually a very quiet place, and so extremely soft sounds are easily audible. These sounds may include people searching for books, sliding books in and out of bookshelves, flipping through the pages of books, writing down notes of their thoughts and ideas, and even tearing up these very ideas. I take these “library-sounds” and organize them into a percussive piece. The bookshelves in the library are amplified with contact mics and each music stand is amplified with a DPA microphone. The musicians are placed at the bookshelf and perform the piece, creating the "library sounds" mentiond above. The composition also uses traditional instruments that weave in and out of the percussive milieu of these library-sounds. The sounds of drums, bassoon, contrabass clarinet, and cello are interpolated into the soundscape library-sounds in order to add a dimension of expressive color that is unleashed by the musicians. These instrumental sounds are restrained and designed to cohere into a compounded form with the library-sounds.
In a larger perspective, this piece pays homage to the active process that is covertly at work in the library by visitors to the library. Everyday, millions of people around the world visit their local library. These innumerable, “anonymous” visitors to the library are the referent for The Unnamed.
For thousands of years, human beings have written books, read books, copied books and, of course, even destroyed books. While we tend to focus on the knowledge contained within a book itself, this piece positions significance on people themselves, how people engage with books, and our behaviors that ultimately determine what ideas from our past are preserved and what ideas are forgotten. Unfortunately, there is no proper documentation of this performance.
"The Unnamed" was premiered successfully in the Detmold Musikbibliothek; due to a sizable and excited audience, the video cameras were not properly placed and only shows audience members standing in front of the bookcases. I would love to have another opportunity to have this piece performed in a library so that I can share it again and also have an opportunity to properly document it. I hope to have this piece programmed again and to properly document in the future.
Photo: CC BY-SA 4.0 Thorsten Krienke
An alternate performance was recorded, however not in a library as intended:
On/Off (2021)
On/Off is a 1st person player experience created with the 3-D game engine Unity. If you play it, please wear headphones as it contains binaural audio. Only works on computer -- not mobile device compatible.
It's a puzzle-game with emphasis on the logic and presentation of a different world. This is the opening. There will be man edits and later levels that reveal the story further.
