ACEL
group had the opportunity to develop in the eighties an interesting theatre
experience for a theatrical work based on a play by R.W. Fassbinder Von Bremen Freheit
(Freedom in Bremen) presented for the
premiere at the “Festival dei due mondi”
in Spoleto and, later, in various stages in Prato, Napoli, l’Aquila.
The aim was to devise a sort of cybernetic
theater using technologies from the emerging digital world of personal
computers; the realized system, whose core was the sound/movement systemwas intended to mix freely
computer control on music/sounds production and diffusion but also dynamical
control of the space in the representation itself; it was possible to modify
spaces on stage by means of a computer controlled bank of stepping motors.
Interactivity was granted by means of collecting information from the stage by
use of infrared switches but also by use of a purposely realized system based
on a camera; information on the actors on stage was used to produce, under
program control, mechanical and sound events on stage, thus allowing the actors
to create and modify the soundcape and the sound
background of the action and even the scenic space itself. The sound/movement
system was later on used for poetry performances and readings in various
occasions. The underlying idea of the project was a somewhat early and
ingenuous effort of realizing a complete theatre automaton in the direction of
a brand new cybernetic theatre. (see S. Cavaliere, L.
Papadia and P. Parascandolo, "From
Computer Music to the Theatre: the realization of a theatrical automaton,"
Computer Music Journal, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, vol
6, no.4, Winter 1982, pp.22-35.
Decades later
these same pioneering ideas, using improved technologies, where developed
further in the area of Computer Music and Theatre Performance.
