Stück für die Schwerkraft

Piece for gravity. Starting from the idea of weight, gravitational force and objects falling from the sky at different speeds towards the ground, towards the centre of the earth, the Lucerne theatre company ultra imagined a machine able to drop objects onto the stage from the flies. Designed by Thomas Köppel, it has 400 trapdoors, each of which is opened under computer control.

In this set-up, the stage becomes a concrete space for spatial audiovisual composition, in which objects fall at different speeds depending on their shape and density. The idea of composing space, or spatial writing, takes on a literal meaning: the fall of each physical object has to be written in order to shape the sound it makes when it hits the floor. The musical and compositional design is therefore tied directly to the physical space of the stage and to the trajectories of the objects.