In one of the performance spaces a man, a real actor, acts against a
virtual actress, an avatar,
in a second space the real woman acts against a male avatar.
The setting is a space station surrounded by an interactive, chaotic
and intelligent ocean:
A man wakes up and discovers his long dead wife sleeping beside him.
She committed
suicide 10 years ago and has somehow been recreated by the constantly
morphing ocean.
The realisation that she is not the original but a "perfect" clone
drives the story into a da capo
concerning life, death and resurrection
How do you kill an avatar?
In the initial version Mimoid is intended as a dialog between a real actor and an avatar. The man (a baritone) performs his part live, the womans voice (a mezzo soprano) is prerecorded. The performance space (the stage) is a CAVE and the scenography is computer generated, as is the woman. The performance behaviour of the avatar towards the man is governed by rules extracted from the dramaturgical structure of the libretto. This behaviour can range from a very close tracking of the mans every move to more complex stances. The mans movements are therefore being tracked by various means.
As a second step a distributed version running in two (or more) caves
will be developed. In the first performance space the man acts against
a virtual actress, just as in the single site version. At the other space
it is the opposite situation. The woman is real while the man is represented
by an avatar directly controlled by the male actor in the original performance
space. The female avatar is of course also controlled by its physical actor
so there is two complete tracking systems capable of reading the physical
actors positions and movements.
Of course, in this second setting both of the voice parts will be live
but one of the voices (the mans or the womans depending on position of
the listener) will be heard directly and the other one is distributed over
the connecting network and played over loudspeakers.
The music in both versions consists of a prerecorded four channel sound track composed in "classical" electronic music style (i.e. electroacoustic music) combined with some parts being performed live. In the non distributed version the live parts are played by a pianist. In the distributed version there is a pianist at one site and a string quartet at the other.
A potential problem in the distributed version is the delays imposed by the distribution mechanisms (i.e. the network). In the context of music (and music performance) delays as small as 10 to 15 milliseconds can have disastrous consequences for musicians trying to play together. A possible way around this is to try to incorporate tolerance for these delays in the way the music is composed.
The Solaris ocean has been an enigma to the scientific world for more than a century. There has even evolved a special branch of multi disciplinary science called " Solaristics". The semi organic fluid covering the planet shows no regularities in response to different kinds of experimental stimulus and tests. Early reports of fantastic visions and supernatural experiences indicates that the ocean or the cloud filled atmosphere either is mildly hallucinogenic or it really can perform visual metamorphosis.
When Kelvin wakes up after his first night at the space station there is a woman laying next to him in the bed. He recognises her, it is Harvey, the woman he lived with back on earth. But the real Harvey is dead. She killed herself ten years ago as a result of a crisis in their relationship.....
The woman awakes. She is disoriented and asks Kelvin where they are. She apparently thinks she is the original. In the scene that follows she gradually becomes aware of the real situation, she starts to "remember" her own suicide and what led up to it. In desperation Kelvin helps her to once again commit suicide.
The next morning she again lays next to Kelvin in the bed. She doesn't remember anything from the day before. She is "new". Kelvin ( and the audience) realises that the scene will happen again and again for ever....
Is Harey a ghost? Is she a dream created by Kelvins longing and bad conscience? Or is she a manifestation of the Solaris ocean? Are the researchers the ones actually been researched and experimented with?
The above scene is just one chapter from the novel but is an excellent
basis for a 30 minute mini opera.
The structure of the opera Mimoid is as follows:
Overture (duration 5 minutes)
Early morning. The scene is established. We see a man sleeping in a simple bed. The interior of the cabin is spartan and functional. Outside of the big panorama windows the Solaris ocean is gradually becoming lighter and lighter. The man discovers the woman sleeping next to him.
Dialog (duration 20 minutes)
The woman awakes. Then the scene described above ending in the womans death is played out.
Epilogue (duration 5 minutes)
A new morning. The same scene as in the overture. When the woman wakes up we understand the idea with the repetition.
When the story begins Harey thinks she is a real human being, but does this mean that she got the right to be treated as one? If a copy ( a clone) doesn't differ in any way from the original, do these concepts have any relevance? Will the humanism of the future incorporate androids, robots, AI's cyborgs, clones etc... or is there a need for a whole new set of ethic rules.
Inside and outside
The space station (and Kelvins sleeping cabin) is an extremely confined space, but the panoramic observation windows makes the presence of the Solaris ocean constantly felt. The scene setting is therefore being experienced both as claustrophobic and vertigo inducing (probably like being in black space itself) The interior is barren, functional and probably rather boring. The ocean on the other hand, being organic and constantly shifting in form and colour, is both frightening and inviting.
To graphically depict the Solaris ocean is one of the major design challenges of the project. The ocean is fluid like and in constant metamorphosis. Its shiftings are completely unpredictable but at the same time giving a hint of some hidden systematic activity being at work. In the novel somebody puts forward the idea that Solaris is Gods brain, but like other theories about the ocean, this is never confirmed.
In the modeled virtual Solaris ocean there has to be sets of behaviors that maps to the scenic action without ever becoming predictable.
Subject and object
During the performance the suspicion that subject and object has changed places grows stronger and stronger. During all the years of mankind (in vain) studying the Solaris ocean maybe the real situation has been that it is the humans thats been the subject of research and experimentation by an alien intelligence. Maybe humans are too blinded by megalomania and ideas about their own superiority to see and understand the encounter with an equal or superior intelligence or being.
In the distributed version of the opera the switching back and forth between different views could be made even more explicit by the second site having a female psychologist meeting the memory of a long dead man. The audiences at the different performance spaces will then see two different "realities" that somehow seem to be connected.
Stage: A stage for a small group of musicians.
Software: The DIVE system from the DCE group at SICS.
People: Male and female avatar. Male singer, barryton. Female singer, mezzo sopran. String quartet.