Top-Game
2019
Ensemble
Top-Game is a gamified ritual for players, instruments and live-video. As the ground for this ritual is the tradition of the ‘holy’ concert, it is made into a game by offering the musicians a practice of tuning-in through which they can really play, instead of execute a piece.
For this piece I collaborated with artist Kerstin Ergenzinger and the Sono-Choreographic Collective in order to develop and specially create a new family of instruments which are based on the structure of a spin-top. By electrically sonifying and amplifying these musical spin-tops, their spin becomes audible, offering a tuning-in to the forces of gravity as a practice of listening, thus connecting the human with planetary and subatomic states and scales.
These spin-tops are leading the game. They hold on to their center and are vitalised by a muscular impulse that is then released, ever so gradually, into the ground, slowly negotiating with gravity at quite a high speed. The conductor is replaced here by multiple inductors who are leading by influence and not by command, opening up the musicians’ imagination to possibilities of playing with the dancing top.
This gamified-ritual is also a way of playing with the subtle energies that influence our bodies and our instrumental extensions, giving a new spin on what it means to play together.
Concept and composition: Bnaya Halperin-Kaddari
Live video: Kerstin Ergenzinger
Spin-tops were developed In collaboration with the Sono-Choreographic Collective
Comissioned by Ensemble MusikFabrik
Premiered on 3.11.19 in WDR sendsaal, Cologne
For this piece I collaborated with artist Kerstin Ergenzinger and the Sono-Choreographic Collective in order to develop and specially create a new family of instruments which are based on the structure of a spin-top. By electrically sonifying and amplifying these musical spin-tops, their spin becomes audible, offering a tuning-in to the forces of gravity as a practice of listening, thus connecting the human with planetary and subatomic states and scales.
These spin-tops are leading the game. They hold on to their center and are vitalised by a muscular impulse that is then released, ever so gradually, into the ground, slowly negotiating with gravity at quite a high speed. The conductor is replaced here by multiple inductors who are leading by influence and not by command, opening up the musicians’ imagination to possibilities of playing with the dancing top.
This gamified-ritual is also a way of playing with the subtle energies that influence our bodies and our instrumental extensions, giving a new spin on what it means to play together.
Concept and composition: Bnaya Halperin-Kaddari
Live video: Kerstin Ergenzinger
Spin-tops were developed In collaboration with the Sono-Choreographic Collective
Comissioned by Ensemble MusikFabrik
Premiered on 3.11.19 in WDR sendsaal, Cologne