GOLDBERG’S CAVE is an audiovisual interpretation of the Liederhalle as Plato’s cave and an independent overture to GOLDBERG’S DREAM. With the help of AI, Eldagsen generates and animates images for five SW videos in which Johann Sebastian Bach, humans, apes, robot arms, fire and water are staged as central figures of a self-hunting evolution.

The soundtrack is an AI-generated homage to the music by Bach, Riley and Sharma used in the one-time-only concert GOLDBERG’S DREAM:

3 October 2024 | Liederhalle Stuttgart

Thus, Eldagsen fuses elements of GOLDBERG’S DREAM into a mental landscape that is at once familiar and frighteningly alien, trapping the viewer in the liminal space between waking and sleeping.

WHAT IS GOLDBERG’S DREAM?

A performance by Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (SKO): “Does a robot actually have stage fright? He would have reason to be, because it’s going to be a world premiere: In its latest digital project, the SKO is adding media elements to orchestral music to create an immersive audiovisual concert experience. The protagonist is a small orange-coloured robot with one arm, a KUKA, programmed by Creative Robotics. Its first contact with music is Bach’s immortal Goldberg Variations, named after the court musician who is said to have played them to the sleepless Imperial Count in the dark of night. The robot listens spellbound to its technical brilliance and endless playing possibilities. He experiences a moment of realisation. It carefully scans its surroundings during Gerriet K. Sharma’s ‘This is Water’ using artificial intelligence. What he ‘hears’, ‘sees’ and ‘feels’ is visualised in elaborate animations (projection mapping). Artful sound design creates organic connections between the acts. Highly specialised IKO loudspeakers create sound sculptures in unexpected places throughout the room. In the flow of sounds and data streams, the robot itself develops a kind of ‘stream of consciousness’. It searches for community. But how does communication between machine and human succeed? Through music! The orchestra will teach it to play along in Terry Riley’s minimal piece ‘In C’… After ‘Resonance’ and ‘Holo Harmonies’, the SKO is once again bringing a piece of the future into the concert hall. Immerse yourself and dream along!”

TEAM:

@perezinesta . Conductor
KUKA (@kuka_dach) & Spot . Robot
Bobby Mitchell . Piano
Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra
@gksh_lab . Composer
Markus Korselt . Executive Director
@janaka.guenther & Markus Korselt . Concept
@janaka.guenther . XR-Concept & XR-Director & Producer
@moritz.mayerhofer . Animation director
Felix Lange . Lead Developer
Henning Schild . CG Artist
Daniel Deboy,@deltasoundworks, Gerriet K. Sharma . Spatial Audio Concept
Ana Monte, Markus Auer. Sound Design
Amir Bastan, Johannes Braumann . Robotics
@boriseldagsen . Accompanying exhibition (Foyer Liederhalle)
@exzellenteorchesterlandschaft @avactive.de @creativerobotics.at
Liederhalle Culture & Congress Centre
Special thanks to @kukaglobal, @qapture_reality and the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung!