A large music theatre production by student Lukas Rehm for the auditorium of Heidelberg university with libretto written by neural networks.
CASTOR&&POLLUX is a music theatre piece that revolves around central aspects of human life: love, togetherness, death, transcendence and memory. Reaching back to the ancient myth of two uneven twins, the mortal Castor and the immortal Pollux, the project reaches out to futuristic utopia conceived in the Silicon Valley, where the species is redeemed into an infinite existence.
In the here and now, both myth and utopia strike roots in the joint endeavours of engineers, physicists and neuroscientists trying to reconstruct the most complex organ known to man in the EU research framework of the “Human Brain Project”.
The project seeks a very existential mutual core crossing time-periods and aesthetics. With elements of the opera Castor et Pollux (1737/1754) by Jean-Philippe Rameau as one starting point, the artistic formation consisting of Lisa Charlotte Friederich (librettist, director), Lukas Rehm (composer, video director) and Jim Igor Kallenberg (dramaturg) will juxtapose the qualities of Baroque music, performed “in the flesh” with the affective potentiality of new digital compositions for the 4D Spatial Sound System.
Music, stage performance and moving image art will interplay with human conceptuality/mannerisms as well as machine intelligence, creating an immersive experience.
Set in the auditorium of one of the oldest universities in the world, the University of Heidelberg, the 4D System will offer two modi of reception: a »passive God’s perspective« by looking at the play from the ranks, or an the experience of an „involved God“ on stage. The idea for »Castor&&Pollux« has been conceived in 2017 in the newly installed »Laboratorium«, the research & development center of the international music festival Heidelberger Frühling, and will be premiered during its 2019 edition in April.
→ dates and tickets: castorundundpollux.de/index.php/?iurl=kalender/