Performance of Atau Tanaka, 2002
Conception, composition,and realisation : Atau Tanaka
Artifical network character design : Antoine Schmitt
Media database server : Peter Hanappe
Visual design : Gregory Pignot
Project coordination ZKM : Goetz Dipper
Dramaturgue/Producer : Sabine Breitsameter
Executive Producer SWR2 : Hans-Burkhard Schlichting
Performers : Atau Tanaka [in Karlsruhe] Zack Settel [in Montréal, Canada]
Reiko A. and i.d. [in Ogaki-City, Japan]
Recorded recitation : Christiane Bachschmidt, Steve Karier
Prométhée Numérique is a participatory acoustic media art work for broadcast. Sounds submitted by internet- and mobilephone-users form generative materials of anonymous origin. Media streamed into the performance from scheduled artists in different locations contribute to the codes and structures of the entity. This participatory internet activity creates an living data-organism that constitutes the continuing evolving component of the project.
During the performance and live radio broadcast the composer takes over, activating and wiretapping the sleeping entity, ascertaining its physiognomy by filtering its amorphous state and building form. The performance/live radio piece is the spy that opens a media window to eavesdrop the creature at the time of the performance. The composer will sculpt visual and audio elements to create a dramaturgy of interpretation.
The process evokes the listener’s aural and visual imagination of an electronic being which can be all-embracing as well as distant, organic as well as algorithmic, at once life-like and artificial.
The piece addresses the eternal myth that there might be life and identity in the machine. By nurturing and shaping an entity of binary data, the project invites the participants to enter the creative process, while at the same time confronting them with the irony of struggle and release of absolute control.
Commission from Südwestrundfunk (SWR2) hörspiel. Performed at ZKM Karlsruhe Germany, IAMAS Gifu Japan, and Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT) Montréal on March 2002 as part of the Intermedium Festival of radio art.
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