"The force of things" is an opera for objects.
Composed by Ashley Fure, with the complicity of his brother architect, Adam Fure, this piece was first performed in 2016 at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music.
Ashley Fure compose acoustic and
electroacoustic music as well she build multimedia installation art.
Her work explores the kinetic source of sound, bringing focus to the
muscular act of music making and the chaotic behaviors of raw acoustic
matter.
"The force of things" is an immersive work of music theater that wrestles with the animate
vitality of matter and the mounting hum of ecological anxiety around us.
Audience members are invited into a field of sculpted matter circled by a
ring of subwoofer speakers projecting subaudible frequencies. Though
the sounds they emit are too low for humans to hear, the vibrations
these subwoofers push into the air cause disturbances to ripple through
the material infrastructure of the piece. Players slide the flesh of
their palms and the surface of objects against these speaker cones while
they shake, drawing them into the realm of audibility through touch.
Two singers snake side-by-side throughout the space, shouting a warning
that sounds like a whisper in a language no one can understand.
