Animism, for Ensemblekollektiv Berlin is composed for 22 performers, 44 hands, feet, eyes, ears, mouths, microphones, wires, crumpled up pieces of paper, flutes, strangely biological agar-agar creatures, oboe, burdock thistles, clarinets, feathers, horn, trumpets, tuba, photo lights, hazelnut seed pods, wood, saxophone, rye spikes, harp, percussion, baby’s breath, water, jello, synthesizer, violins, black thread, violas, origami, cellos, video cameras, voices, computer vision, and speaker cones.

Over a duration of approximately 60 minutes, the piece opens windows at different angles peeking into various scenes of life performed by objects in a miniature set filmed live on-stage, whose movements and forms are analyzed in realtime by a computer vision algorithm and the instrumentalists of the Ensemblekollektiv.

The life we encounter is sometimes abstract, sometimes familiar, moving and interacting in different types of ecosystems, forming landscapes, moments and impressions weaving together towards a crystalizing whole.

These characters and spaces created by the video-puppet-ensemble are actors in a drama of artificial life, animated through sonic organization and the performer’s gesture. How do we recognize life in the world? In other species, or other ways of living? In the human microbiome there is an estimated 1.5 to 1 ratio of non-human cells to human — and so, we are already more than one entity, like an ensemble.

The piece thinks musically about the act of recognizing, experiencing, and creating other forms of life, and so the performance is a kind of feeling out for the contours of these forms—feeling to see how they move, how they change in response to our touch, how they suggest a framing of our actions, and how the 22 performers might join together into a kind of organic theater.

Composition commissioned by Philharmonie Luxembourg, for the 2020/21 rainy days festival.