During special Gaudeamus tours in Museum Speelklok we will guide you through the wondrous world of self-playing instruments. The finale of the tour is the audiovisual installation Multitudes, exclusively in Museum Speelklok during Gaudeamus Muziekweek.
Multitudes is an intriguing work by artist Andreas Greiner and composer Tyler Friedman (winners of the Conlon Music Prize 2015) for Yamaha Disklavier (a self-playing piano), electronics, and plankton (!). The audiovisual installation combines biology with music and visual art. Single-celled algae, the Dinoflagellate Pyrocystis Fusiformis to be precise, receive electronic signals from the Disklavier and as a result give a bioluminescent response; in other words, they light up! Friedman based the music mathematically on the reproductive cycle of algae. Out of complete silence the music and light patterns exponentially increase in complexity, intensity, and frequency, until they reach the maximum number of variations. After this peak the algae are completely exhausted by overstimulation, which results in complete darkness.
The tour is English spoken.
Photo © Ben Kaufman