FORCE IS PRESENT, the new work by German-Austrian composer Brigitta Muntendorf, comes to BASE Milano for its National Premiere at FAROUT Festival and opens ReSilence, the major immersive exhibition dedicated to the relationship between sound, the city, and the future.
On stage, a performer generates sound without touching any instrument, solely through the power of their gestures and the speed of their body. This is achieved using special controllers that transform movement into acoustic signals, often in 3D, creating a narrative where the music becomes the echo of an invisible force or a disjoined action.
The use of 3D audio and cloned AI voices challenges our perception, leading us to question a crucial point: What is left of us when the music is no longer made by our fingers, but by the sheer force of our movement?
FORCE IS PRESENT is not a traditional concert, but a radical audiovisual experiment that invites us to a deep and active listening, merging technology, social fragility, and high-impact acoustics. It is a device that questions how technology is reshaping our capacity to perceive and interact with reality.
Bio
Brigitta Muntendorf is an internationally acclaimed German-Austrian composer and one of the most radical voices in the contemporary music scene. Her work extends beyond pure sound, encompassing 3D Audio installations, trans-digital dance theatre pieces, and Augmented Reality (AR) projects.
Muntendorf has conceptualized “Social Composing”: a compositional principle that addresses the socio-political and techno-social fragility of our reality, transforming digital communication models (such as the “tweet/re-tweet”) into musical and performative material. Her artistic research focuses on “Radical Listening” and the use of cutting-edge technologies like 3D Audio and Cloned AI Voices (already used in her space oratorio ORBIT – A War Series, commissioned by the Venice Biennale and hailed by Rolling Stone as “a powerful exploration of the dramas of war”).
Her works, performed by prominent ensembles like the Ensemble Modern, have been featured on the world’s most important stages, including Ruhrtriennale, Biennale Musica, Festival d’Automne, and ULTIMA Oslo. In addition to her creative work, she is a Professor of Composition at the HfMT Cologne and director of the Institute for Contemporary Music, solidifying her role as a pioneer of the future of music.
Credits
Light design / stage: N.N.
Programming: Lukas Nowok
Dramaturgy: Moritz Lobeck
AI Voice Clone: Alena Verin Galitskaya / Respeecher
ReSilence Partner: University Genova, Research Center Casa Paganini / Infomus (Antonio Camurri) Maastricht University, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience (Beatrice de Gelder)
