An atlas of rain and wind for elevated performers with falling objects and wind machines
It's raining objects, elements, material. Meanings, stories, motifs, subjects overlap and settle to form an archipelago of growing piles. As encyclopaedic and insurveyable as the world itself. In Georg Nussbaumer's commissioned composition to mark the opening of the steirischer herbst festival, music is largely relieved of its duty to sound and relies completely on its nature as a material-consuming energetic process. "Gravitational field with air impressions" is a kinetic air/falling sculpture. Sound is swallowed by its own forces; warping emptiness is perforated by showers of hundreds of objects. Until, finally, there is a lull. With this work, Nussbaumer, whose compositions are usually works situated between installation and opera, extended in time and space and founded on myths, takes a radical step. Leaving the safety of an underlying story in favour of individual associations, he transcends the realm of the audible to penetrate the silent core of music.