OtherWorldly Transformations

Insect Flights & Otherworldy Transformations

 is a 3D sound sculpture that is also a giant theremin. The sculpture is mostly the antenna, with the processing unit being contained in a small replica of the overall piece nestled in the center of it like a lamp. This theremin therefore also a light hanging in the center of the sculpture itself mirroring the shape of the structure that contains it.

As a light, it attracts humans and bugs. It can be played, reflecting human electromagnetic energies in quiet high pitched tones reflecting the insect world. Its many faceted dome, reflecting the facets of their eyes. 

During the opening week at the Kochin Biennale the artist will come and play selected pieces in the sculpture to create a sound sphere environment for visitors on the inside, further contextualizing and activating the sound sphere.



Dedicated to the flies, the mosquitoes and the wasps. Buzz buzz


The artist will orchestrate three re-interpretations of “Fight of the Bumble-Bee” by Rimsky Korsakov. 



More about the music:
In “The Tale of Tsar Sultan, The Great Bogatyr, and the Swan-Princess” the Bogatyr Gvidon is turned into sometimes a fly, then mosquito, then bumble-bee, and surely other countless variations on a series of insects. A famous opera song has only been written for the bumble-bee sequence.



Many of us are familiar with "Flight of the Bumble Bee" but what most of us don't know is it's not a composition about a bumble bee, it's a composition about a magical being "neither male nor female" according to Pushkin's version, who turns into a bumble bee to go fly from their liminal land of wonders to the kingdom of their birth to spy on their father who is being held prisoner by an evil witch who is also their grandmother. The bumble-bee is their third transformation, the first or second one was a mosquito (and the other a fly). There's an amazing rendition of the space the flies fly through through in the movies Night Watch and Day Watch. Though unlike director Timur Bekmambetov I was always taken with the mosquitoes.

Flies carry disease, pestilence, dysentery, plague. Mosquitoes suck our blood, and carry Malaria, DengueI, Zika, West Nile, and other viruses. Wasps, while being important pollinators have a powerful stinger and evoke visceral fear in us humans. In “The Tale of Tsar Sultan, The Great Bogatyr, and the Swan-Princess”, transformation into insects is used to travel between the three and thirty kingdoms. It is said that birds travel between the realms, but I like this insect strain, they feel more other-worldy. Opening a rift through liminal space. 

Listen to them buzz around the sound-sphere and create your own buzzing with the metal itself.


How it works: The artist has reconfigured and re-arranged the midi notes of "The Flight of the Bummble Bee", mapped and layered them to different instruments and wired in the sculpture Otherworldly Transformations as a controller for the midi notes as well as one of the live instruments playing the piece.

The piece is performed by artist Karla Maltus who created a Kathak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathak) inspired dance for the sculpture and re-interpretation of the story. Kathak is a traditional dance used to tell stories through its extensive repertoire of hand gestures, movements, and facial expressions.

Otherworldly Transformations transforms traditional art forms and EM waves many times over. The Slavic folktale on which the music is based is part of a rich oral tradition, wherein in each re-telling the story, like the characters within it are transformed. The opera by Rimskiy Korsakov and written tale by Pushkin codified this story but the fact that the music is available in midi format allowed me to manipulate the note clusters until the piece is so transformed it is perhaps not recognizable without reading this program note. Kathak is a traditional art form which is also used to tell stories, transforming the story a little, each time it is performed by a different person, like an oral tradition, there is some drift over the decades and centuries. When used to tell this story, which comes from a different part of the world and is itself about transformation, the tale is even further transformed.

In this mise en scène the dance is also one of the musicians. Positioning herself within the electric field of the theremin she transforms the electronic field around her, she also transforms and shapes the flow of notes and acoustic sounds when she hits the sculpture playing it like a percussive instrument.

Karla and I are both using the technological substrate to carry traditional expressions into the present.

At the same time the mise en scène is also a musical instrument, one so big that it implies choreography further exploring the ways in which the technological compels human performance art expression and expresses itself through us.