PRODUCTION CREDITS
EL SOMNI – Gastronomic Opera in 12 acts
Franc Aleu – El Celler de Can Roca (Joan, Josep y Jordi Roca)
Act 2 – “Space”
Music: Pedro Alcalde / Sergio Caballero
Violin: Kolja Blacher
Instrument: Stradivari Tritton 1730
Video: Franc Aleu
Dish: Frosty Foams – El Celler de Can Roca
Premiered at Arts Santa Mònica Barcelona 6th May 2013
Exhibition: 9th May – 7 June 2013 – Arts Santa Mònica Barcelona
Film: 10th February 2014 – Berlinale Film Festival Berlin
Book: 15th April 2014
BACKGROUND
The original idea came from video artist Franc Aleu in collaboration with the restaurant El Celler de Can Roca, as a tribute to the banquets and shows of the seventeenth-century French chef François Vatel. The idea arises from the desire to break the barriers of several artistic disciplines into a synthetic project. In their own words:
“The image, the art, the music, the taste, and smell, are united in a cross-media workpiece: an opera-dinner about the cyclical journey of human existence. El Somni is the result of a cross-media creation because it takes several forms: the dining experience ever lived, the making of a film, the conception of two exhibitions and the publishing of a book. All these different media explain the process of creation and adventure of this union between arts and kitchen at the service of thought.”
TITLE
Of the twelve acts, our collaboration was focused on the second: “Act 2 – Space.”
The synopsis proposed by the script was:
“In the kingdom of cold and darkness, the universe is the mystery of the order. The zodiac divides the space into twelve signs, in twelve aspects with different influences. Astrid emerges in the eighth. It is owned by the cold and the darkness around her. She has lost the meaning of life. Everything is blackness. Between sound and silence, there is only the stillness of an invisible vibration.”
MUSIC
In an attempt to subtract the violin from his signature sound defined through its long journey across the history of music, we tried to listen to the instrument and not to the composer who created the music for it. In a gastronomic analogy, it would be like trying to find the “terroir” in the wine and not the winemaking. In relation to the dramaturgical content, reduced musical elements are used, mainly very slow glissandi. These musical elements find their path towards the cold emptiness and the ultimate solitude of the space.
Four independent sound sources (north-south-east-west) frame and define the centre where the listening takes place. The recording took place at the Teldex Studio Berlin with different types of microphones strategically positioned very close to the instrument.
SOUND PALETTE
Violin: using extended playing techniques
MEDIUM
DVD-Audio – four channel
DURATION
Variable depending on the format of presentation
