Sandglasses

Credits
Idea and music: Justė Janulytė
Video installation: Luca Scarzella
Video assistent: Michele Innocente
Live electronics: Michele Tadini | Antonello Raggi
Scenography: Juratė Paulėkaitė
Light design: Eugenijus Sabaliauskas | Vilius Vilutis
Performers: cellists of “Gaida Ensemble” (E. Kulikauskas | P. Jacunskas | R. Tamutytė | O. Švabauskaitė)

The project was initiated and supported by the European network for the creation and promotion of new music Réseau Varèse. The piece was included in the programmes of Gaida festival (LT), Huddersfield contemporary music festival (UK), Maerzmusik (DE), Holland festival (NL), Warsaw Autumn (PL), Musica festival (FR) and RomaEuropa (IT).

Duration
50'

Programme note
The concert installation “Sandglasses” explores acoustic, visual and symbolic meanings of a sand timer, as a phenomenon. The inspiration of the piece is a simultaneous launch of several sandglasses of different capacity and duration. This idea is materialized in music by a polytemporal canon played by cellos which pass through their entire register at different rates, thus the initial unison splits off, the voices keep moving further from each other and reach the lowest note at different moments. The sounds produced live are being recorded and repeated in several variants that individually slow down and therefore descend, so that every cello’s sound generates its own polytemporal canon. They keep multiplying and layering before finally interlacing into a dense micropoliphonic texture which covers, floods and replaces the real sources of sound.

The musical idea is visualized by the purpose-built cylinder screens, made of tulle, where video images and light effects are projected. They extend and transform the performers’ existence on the stage while creating fictions and submerging spectators into various perceptive experiences...read more.

Selected press reviews in PDF