A monotonous soundscape with no way to interpret it during the performance.
Presented by Electric Dreams
Reviewed 19 February 2022
Some things only sound like a good idea.
Anthropocene is defined as “the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.” Anthropocene in C Major attempts to turn approximately 12,000 years of data into sound to record that human impact on the earth.
Composer, producer and performer, Jamie Perera, is accompanied by Julian Ferraretto to present a live, 45-minute soundscape of music and short snippets of historical voice recordings. They attempt to transform earth system trends, global socia-economic trends, fossil fuel consumption, biodiversity loss and major events of the Anthropocene era into sound and music.
They don’t. At least, not from the audience’s perspective.
A downloadable performance guide gives some indication of their interpretation but the graphic is impossible to read in the dim light of the performance, and it offers no real explanation to the layman anyway. The visuals used during the show, projected onto a standard presentation screen, split film footage and still images into ever-shrinking horizontal strips, creating a visual melange of meaningless footage that doesn’t offer any way to interpret the monotonous soundscape.
The music is more akin to a pulsing hum than a melody, but the concept could have been quite intriguing if the visuals related directly to the sounds so the audience could connect the dots themselves. Instead, those who remained to the end remained in the dark.
Reviewed by Rod Lewis
Twitter: @StrtegicRetweet
Venue: South Australian Museum, North Tce, Adelaide
Season: Final show on 22 February at 7pm
Duration: 45 minutes
Tickets: $10-$20
Bookings: https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/electric-dreams-anthropocene-in-c-major-af2022
Rating out of 5: 2
#Adelaide # ADLfringe @SAMuseum
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