Murmuration vs. SETI at sunrise (no audio yet)
Earth vs. the Universe – Tallis’ Spem in Alium
Calabi Yau Manifolds alone – Tallis’ Spem in Alium
Calabi Yau Manifolds vs. Photon – Bach Prelude-Fugue 9 (E major) BWV 854 (splitscreen video)
Crinoids battling Chainsaws – Bach Prelude-Fugue 9 (E major) BWV 854
Booth prototype at present (65″ monitor) – one of five
Project description
Sir Henry
Travelogue of an Astrophysical Neutrino
– Inter-activating installation by the multimedia artist and Volksbühne music director Sir Henry
– Participatory composition of image, sound and movement
– Exploratory walk through acutely readjusting borderline experiences of knowledge, perception and thought scenarios.
The work leads the gallery visitor on a path around five large screens. From the multi perceptual experience of swarms of birds, medusas, Calabi-Yau shadows and spiral galaxies, the visitor enters the border regions of current knowledge constructions. In the process he experiences himself as part and co-creator of these multi-dimensional worlds:
By means of arm, hand and body movements, the observer/actor moves and changes trajectories, turns, seams, distances and swarm algorithms. With these movements, he simultaneously plays a solo musical instrument specific to each monitor. The sounds thus brought to life harmonise with a central song that resounds through the gallery. In this way, the visitors jointly compose a coherent musical whole, an integrative temporary universe.
The sudden peripetism occurs when the visitors/performers in the feedback of joint action recognise themselves as a dancing group. The direct visual axes lateral to the monitor world create a connection and mirror their own conducting in the other. In the joint, comical and profound body play, the installation creates experiences of entering and emerging between virtual dimensions and performative presence.
“Travelogue of an Astrophysical Neutrino” picks up on the contemporary trend in art and film towards immersion, and at the same time gives it a wink of Shakespearean folly. The acutely discussed question “où atterrir / where to land” in a world of global perspectives (Bruno Latour) finds its counterpart not in abstract counter-concepts, but directly in space, body and moment. The theatrical desire to operate the virtual machine empowers visitors to approach current scientific thinking. In doing so, they do not experience it as an overpowering truth, but rather in its aesthetic form and in its malleability, which is constantly to be thought of anew.
Sir Henry – aka John Henry Nijenhuis
Sir Henry received classical piano training from the age of seven. His later studies at King’s College in Halifax in Canada included occidental philosophy, history, theology, electroacoustic music, art and computer science.
After coming to Berlin in 1996 at the invitation of the Akademie der Künste to perform at the “Sonambiente” festival, he stayed and was appointed musical director and composer at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Here he developed the musical threads of their productions with Frank Castorf, Dimiter Gotscheff and other directors, and was involved in the Volksbühne’s development into one of the most acclaimed theatres in the world. Since 2017, Sir Henry has developed several works with Alexander Kluge, for example at the Museum Folkwang Essen, at the Belvedere 21 Vienna, at the 57th Venice Biennale and at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Under the direction of Chis Dercon, Nijenhuis created the interactive music and CGI installation “Begone Dull Care” with motion sensors in the Green Salon of the Volksbühne, and 2019, a motion sensor tent in “Bauhaus: Ein Rettendes Requiem” by Schorsch Kamerun.
The New York Times published an extensive Sunday Profile of Sir Henry in May 2021 and wrote about his internet performance “Quarantine: for Solo Human”, which appeared on the Volksbühne platform in 2020 in the midst of the CoVid pandemic:
Sir Henry “conducted the cosmos… as part of an interactive musical installation that sent a planet spiraling through a computer-animated universe… As he gracefully waved his arms, a delicate celestial choreography emerged. Earth hurtled through a galaxy that expanded and shrank at his command… His gestures also controlled the cosmic soundscape, adjusting the pitch and volume of a “space choir” that harmonized to a Bach prelude.”
Description by Sir Henry and Heiko Michels