Experimentally, this work seeks to make a connection between two rather different universes: that of the theatre of objects and of puppets with the universe of experimental electro-acoustic music.
The project is inspired by a true story in which a tightrope walker (equilibrist) named Karl Wallenda, in an attempt to cross two buildings in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on 22 March 1978, dies, live on the Puerto Rican television channel WAPA-TV.
We do not wish to narrate the dramatic story of the life of this artist, but we do wish to narrate the eminence of the fall, this matter of seconds that precedes it and, in which, upon encountering it, we are confronted with an option: do I give up or not?
We start with the artist’s own condition when he encounters the problems of his work at the time of the creation and of the choices that he has to make. We can see that the creative act is intimately linked to the decisions that are taken at the time.
In this particular case, a fall from a rope, where the artist risks his own life without any safety nets, can, as a result of one decision, lead him to surrender and let go.
In the current context, the artist in Portugal is also hanging by a thread, i.e., he is at a moment in which he either quits his art or he continues searching and persisting, so that the importance of art in contemporary life is recognised.
We have chosen a bare theatre to best describe this moment of the sound of the fall, of the sound of death (if that is indeed what occurs?), being that this will always be a work of searching for these sounds, which we tend to ignore; nor do we take the time to reflect on our existence.
This fusion between two different universes happens in real time in terms of both the manipulation of the objects and the sound, as what interests us is the search for this object’s soul of sound. To do this, we are going to construct or modify a sound table, amplified through a piezoelectric system so that the objects produce their own sound when we manipulate them on the table, as a result of movements, intensities and materials.
By using different digital systems, we are also going to modify the objects themselves so that they create their own sound (soul) and so that the audience can also hear it as they see the action unfold, whilst simultaneously feeling it as the sound travels around the space.
With a fusion between two very different universes being the basis of this work and never straying from that which is at the root of electronic music, we are going to work with what they produce best and try to create a liturgical-technological show.