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Rama Gottfried: Scenes from the Plastisphere

for video-puppet-instrument and five performers

(2018)

Within the ocean’s accumulating zones of plastic debris, a new ecosystem is emerging which scientists have named the plastisphere. This is partly good news, because it seems to suggest that life on Earth will eventuality adapt to incorporate the results of human carelessness; but on the other hand, the resulting ecosystem may not be one which supports life as we know it. Scenes from the Plastisphere depicts a musical theater of imaginary hybrid creatures growing within and around human culture, moving with organic bodies and speaking with digital voices.

A sequel of sorts to Apophänie (2016), the piece develops a performance environment composed of multiple layers of movement at different scales. Actual-size human performers on stage are connected to biological entities performing in a microscopic theater. The action is right in front of us but just beyond our view, perceivable only through incomplete, implied information from the stage, and the digitally magnified sound amplification and video projection.

Shifting through a sequence of contrasting vantage points in the miniature pseudo-organic environment, a narrative grows between the microscopic entities. The organisms of the miniature world are born, mutated, absorbed, and consumed within the virtual ecosystem. They are artificial components of the video-instrument apparatus, yet are alive, brought to life through sonic organisation and the performer’s gesture. The score for the piece thinks musically about the lifeforms appearing within the physical materials, but the material is unstable organic matter–to discover the entities hidden in the material, the performers must recognise the connections and emerging patterns in an ever-changing field of interactions.

Commissioned through the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung and Philharmonie Luxembourg.

Rama Gottfried

Rama Gottfried
© privat

Rama Gottfried (*1977 in New York) aims to increase our sensitivity to the web of relations that connect humans and the other animate and inanimate entities that surround us. His pieces are conceived as scenographic worlds–bodies with voices that move and interact in physical and immaterial environments, constructed from the medias of acoustic and electronic instrumental performance, puppet-, object-, material-theater, live-cinema, and the site-specific performance context. Brought to life through the collaborative actions of human and nonhuman performers, the works attempt to absorb the audience and physical space, subtly expanding our awareness of detail.

Rama Gottfried grew up in Burlington, Vermont, where he began instrumental and electronic music training at an early age, attending Bread and Puppet Theater performances and developing a visual art practice before shifting focus to music performance and composition. After moving to New York City in 2001, he joined Ensemble Pamplemousse, collaborating with the group from 2003–2013 finding new approaches to the merging of sound, installation, and performance arts.

During his PhD studies at the University of California, Berkeley, Rama studied composition with Franck Bedrossian and computer music with David Wessel at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT). Previously, he completed studies at New York University, Manhattan School of Music, and Universität der Künste Berlin, where he studied with Walter Zimmermann.

Rama’s works have been featured at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, MaerzMusik, SPOR, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, MATA, Klangwerkstatt, rainy days, and Ultima festivals, among others, and he has created sound installations for the Berliner Congress Center, Complice, Mino Washi Paper Museum, Stadtbad-Wedding, and the Pacific Basin Building.

After moving back to Berlin in 2017, Rama was appointed Professor of Contemporary Computer Music Practice at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK) in 2022, where he is now teaching and pursuing interdisciplinary art and technology research at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technologies (ICST).

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Rama Gottfried: Scenes from the Plastisphere

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