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Cybeline Cybeline is about a cyborg trying to be a talk show host to prove she is human. It is about nature, virtual reality, biotechnology, and the mass media -- and about finding the heart and poetry in technology as it also contemplates its horrors. What does a fifty-year-old structure of silicon have to teach a five billion year old structure of carbon?
Cybeline has two modes, on-line and off-line, abruptly separated by a loud buzzer. Her producers/programmers toggle her between the two. When on-line, the pace of her talk show host routines are relentless, emulating the frenetic character of video cuts used by commercial television. When off-line, she enters a dream-like world where the music is partially determined by computer programmed random operations that allude to the “music of nature.” The music is thus different for each performance.
During the off-air random music, Cybeline hears almost imperceptible random whispers coming from all around her that become increasingly present as the work progresses. She is not sure what they are, but prefers to think of them as the voices of goddesses.
Cybeline derives her name from the Goddess Cybele who was brought to Rome from Phrygia in 204 B.C. Her temple stood on the Vatican, where St. Peter’s Basilica stands today, up to the 4th century A.D. when Christians took it over. Roman emperors like Augustus, Claudius, and Antoninus Pius regarded her as the supreme deity of the empire. Augustus established his home facing her temple. In the 5th century, Christians relentlessly destroyed the religious beliefs surrounding Cybele, especially her embodiment as the Mother Earth. St. Augustine called her a harlot mother, “the mother, not of the gods, but of the demons.” Churchmen believed the powers of “witches” came from the same sort of contact with the Mother Earth. Arresting officers often carried them to prison in a large basket, so their feet would not touch the ground.
The work also alludes to other historical figures. Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th century mystic, was known for her wisdom, medical studies, music, and visual art. She is one of the first identifiable composers in the history of Western music. She was known as the “Sybil of the Rhine.” Her philosophic focus was the interconnectedness of all things. Hypatia was a 4th century Greek mathematician and philosopher murdered by a mob at the instigation of the Archbishop of Alexandria. They scraped the flesh from her bones with sharpened seashells. She is one of the first known martyrs of science. Maat is an Egyptian goddess who stands at the gates of the afterlife with a set of scales. Those with hearts as light as a feather pass to heaven.
The
principle focus of our work for the last 30 years has been chamber music
theater. This genre hardly exists
in Western culture because it is extremely difficult to successfully combine
theater with the sparseness of chamber music. Even efforts by composers such
as Schubert and Schumann are little more than melodramatic curiosities.
In
opera, the orchestra pads the drama, epic sets and pageantry blur over the
superficiality of the plots, and the acting need only be sufficient for people
looking through binoculars. The
focus is on singing and occasional orchestral fireworks. In chamber music theater, complex scripts have to be
delivered with convincing theatrical skill even if combined with utterly
precise timings and inflections dictated by the music. Cybeline compounds
these problems with an abrupt collage of styles, moods, video and twelve tone
music. This leaves a burden on the performer to develop new performance
practices and techniques that hardly exist.
To
create a genuine integration of the arts we write our own texts and music and
produce and perform the works ourselves.
We also created the video for Cybeline.
Though our orientation is not specifically technological, we
incorporate many of the most recent developments such as surround sound, video
and live electronics. Our
artistic concerns are generally social, so we try to combine our
experimentation with styles that are moderately approachable to a broader
public. Beckett
once said that his theater is an “enigma wrapped in a mystery.”
The beauty of theater is that its iconic meanings are left open to each
individual’s interpretation, so we generally avoid “explaining” our
works. We continue to find new
meanings in them even years after their completion. For
more extensive program notes about the philosophic, aesthetic and social
concerns of Cybeline see our website at:
www.osborne-conant.org/cybby-programnotes.htm For
an essay outlining our theories, techniques, and philosophy of music theater
see “New Vistas for the Performing Arts” at:
www.osborne-conant.org/vistas.htm ---Abbie
Conant and William Osborne
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