Lichtklangnacht, you say?
Well, it’s funny. You talk about ideas and about technology and how this all might transform our view on music and artists and about distribution and about performance and whatnot, and yes, you give a small demo to underline your ideas. And then, after everything is done, and the points are being made and the discussions been brought to a halt by the people organizing the congress, you meet someone who asks you if you want to transform movements of people on a bungee trampoline into sound. Like, after all you said and demonstrated, this totally would be the next logical step. And he even goes quite some lengths to make you overcome your fears that this might probably a too big of a move for you.
Wolfgang Schmiedt is that guy. He is the main guy/director behind a nice little two day festivity called “Lichtklangnacht” in Rostock, where he, and quite a lot of various artists turn the park that has been created for the 2003 international garden fair (IGA) into a beautiful light sculpture combined with musical and theatrical performances. Mind you, before Wolfgang approached me, I never heard of it, so it seems like more of a local attraction. Still, some over 4000 people came this year to look at the spectacle.
The “Lichtklangnacht” (loosely translatable as “lightsoundnight”) always has a motto, an old story as an anchor to everything happening on the two nights. This year, the story of Peter Pan was chosen, with the appropriate subtitle “of dreaming and flying”. To create an attraction for the otherwise mostly bored-to-death children, Wolfgang added a bungee trampoline to the setup. Pretty close to flying, if you ask me.
Now, obviously, for someone like Wolfgang Schmiedt, all it takes to connect the dots is to watch some geeks showing off some technology (in our case, we played with the acceleration sensors in an iphone to show how you can use it to influence a music performance). Which is, in itself, amazing.
But what can I say? We actually did it. We turned a four-seat bungee trampoline into a music instrument. Kind of.
More details coming soon.
