Endless Pleasures III: Der Singende Kopf

DER SINGENDE KOPF (“The Singing Head”) tells of a dynamic purgatory and a digital heaven, based on Ovid’s epilogue of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and on the Chinese opera The Peony Pavilion.

Is the internet the key to eternal love? Time and space, physical and mental inadequacies, they’re all overcome with the help of digital data. This stage production positions reality and virtuality as a metaphor for our world and the other side, and in the center, the eternal issue of the fear of death. If we were able to transcend death, would we miss it? Could we find fulfillment by having virtual control?

The multimedia collective schnellebuntebilder realizes an immersive space onstage that fuses reality and virtuality. For Orpheus, the boundary between life and death no longer exists.

On a musical level, Marc Sinan pursues the two diametrically opposed principles of digital change: on the one hand, algorithms mercilessly make us slaves to the rhythm, but on the other, traditional notions of social hierarchy dissolve through the possibilities that digital communication allow. If new, non-hierarchical collaborations among artists are possible, then perhaps such a utopia could also apply to society.