Spotlight on DJ
Spooky That Subliminal Kid (not his Christian name) on the gigantic BAM
opera house stage, behind a simple yet elegant podium, upon which a small block
of dry ice provides a percussive element, as Spooky slowly drags a set of chimes
back and forth, amplified so loud to the point of it being almost painful to
listen to. After a few minutes, he retreats behind the curtain, which opens to
reveal him in his element, behind a set of turntables, surrounded by Jacob Greenberg, Erik Carlson, Jen Curtis,
and Kivie Cahn-Lipman of ICE (the International Contemporary
Ensemble), to launch into the opening movement of Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica.
By pure coincidence, I recently watched Werner Herzog’s delightful Encounters at the End of the World, the quirky meditation/documentary made during an austral summer (no darkness!) on the icy continent. Herzog does an amazing job of showing that Antarctica is not the “forgotten continent” of mythology, though we like very much to fetishize it as desolate, empty, virginal even. In reality, it is populated by (mostly) scientists and dreamers and drifters from all over the world (the continent has no official governmental affiliation), all of whom are looking for answers: to global warming, to microbes, to the big bang, to, in classic Herzog rhetoric, the meaning of existence. Herzog rarely shows the wasteland, vying for the abundance of animals, the dirt of the bulldozers, and the warehouses of laboratories and mechanics. Truly, Antarctica is bustling with life, politics, science, and a culture unto its own.
This is the very same impulse Spooky had when he went on a grant two years ago to compose Terra Nova; he learned about global warming and the ice floes that were threatened by human intervention, recorded them, and composed this piece. He claims in his notes that not only is Antarctica rife with action, but it can be read as information as well. Antarctica can be digitized (for better or worse) much like an Excel spreadsheet or an mp3.
The performance and piece itself are quite beautiful, as DJ Spooky almost seems incidental to the musicians and projections accompanying him. The members of ICE have an intense job—70 minutes straight of playing—and they plow through with the grace and intensity I’ve come to expect from them. (I could watch Greenberg play “Chopsticks” for hours in the same way we say we could watch an actor read the phone book.)
Very cool are the projection designs by the mighty, mighty Jim Findlay, who makes the very walls of the opera house screens for a combination of Antarctic landscapes, WTO bar graphs, and generic x and y axis play. Perhaps the most brilliant effect is the use of screens behind the performers in addition to a scrim in front, creating a dynamic layering effect that sucks in the performers and gives the screens their due; not just flat surfaces to put “cool” things on as I am so often annoyed by. To add to the screen-flow, the projections are intelligently conceived: text stretches to a bar code, which give way to a bar graph, which gives way to a striated ice shelf. These are so smooth and jaw-dropping that one wishes they weren’t used so much—we’re treated to too much video for the sake of keeping it going.
And the music! There’s music! In truth, with my limited knowledge of the sinfonia format, I doubt Terra Nova will go down in history as a groundbreaking piece. The music is nice, certainly keeps the audience involved, but I was disappointed in the lack of Antacrtic—the sounds DJ Spooky went to record at the South Pole are either too quiet to hear or are so well integrated that the threshold is lost. His occasional manipulation of the live instruments and employment of the theremin (always welcome, as far as I’m concerned) therefore stick out like sore thumbs.
Ultimately, the evening is quite spectacular, and Spooky, as always, is quite the showman, and Terra Nova may actually spark some thoughts about the Land of Nothing, the Land of Plenty beyond a march of some penguins.
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