In the concert conceived especially for ARS ELECTRONICA, the topological (situated on the banks of the river Danube), the intentional (as a centre for congresses and concerts) and the architectural characteristics (as a sector of a circle) of the Brucknerhaus will determine the structure of the three parts of the performance. In the flow of the text by Edgar Allen Poe materials by Adorno, Baudelaire, Lem, Melville, and others are included that are directed towards the centre of the investigation:
DISCOVERY & DESTRUCTION
A Norwegian fisherman guides the narrator to a cliff offering a view of
the Maelström, a whirlpool between Lofoden and the island of Moskoe
described as a terrifying and incredibly destructive vortex in all accounts.
The most exaggerated references, however, only serve to make the experience of
the fisherman appear all the more terrible:
For better catches he and his two brothers risk dangerous water passages and
one night after having fished they miss the time for slack-water and they are
suddenly - things always happen suddenly with Poe - borne by a hurricane
towards the Maelström at tremendous velocity.
Right at the beginning of this horrible ride he loses one brother and then in the breathtaking gyrations on the interior surface of the funnel also the second one who is drawn into the abyss with the boat. He himself overcomes fear and terror and an inexplicable curiosity helps him to make observations in the rapid revolutions (with the opposite side of the funnel appearing to stand still) about the velocities of descent of the other objects gyrating with him: a hope dawns on him and lashed to a cask he is saved by his old mates a little time later.
Staging literature today in a musical or theatrical way must mean more than just illustrating the semantics of literature's history. As you see, this can be related in a few sections; not Poe's language, which can be read. Therefore here we have the concert under the aspect of an inquiry into the single elements: language strategies, point-of-view or rather directions-of-view, textual movement, structural properties etc. within the three areas: VIEWING SPACE, REFLECTION SPACE, ROTATION SPACE.
"If you are on a sinking ship and all lifeboats have left, a passing pianolid to
hold on to is a welcome life-saver. And yet that does not imply that the shape
of piano-lids were the best design for lifebelts."
(after a quotation from Buckminster Fuller)
