The Force of Things

 

"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.