The Force of Things
an Opera for ObjectsA sonic installation that rumbles with the impact of climate change. Performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble.
21/22 Hop PresentsComposer/architect sibling duo Ash and Adam Fure gesture towards the gravity of ecological collapse in this immersive, mind-widening experience. Audience members enter into a field of sculpted matter ringed by speakers sounding waveforms too low for human ears. Though resonating outside our auditory boundaries, this choir of subwoofers sends ripples of energy that tremble through and pulsate the material world of the piece. Two singers snake side-by-side amidst the audience, shouting a warning that sounds like a whisper in a language no one can understand. A palpable sense of urgency permeates the space and yet it's also eerily still, as if the timescales are off, as if some future frantic state reaches us only in slow motion. Both visually arresting and sonically intense, The Force of Things: an Opera for Objects operates outside language, offering in place of story a cathartic communal experience that invites audiences to slow down into the urgencies around and inside us, together.
This large-scale interdisciplinary performance of The Force of Things at the Hop will be the flagship venture of Archiving the Immersive: a tactical research project aimed at expanding access to experiential art. Initiated by Ash Fure, the project is the recipient of Dartmouth's Scholarly Innovation and Advancement Award and builds on research partnerships with the University of Michigan's Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning. By combining binaural, vector-based audio recording; cinematic sensory ethnography techniques; embedded media asset scores and XR strategies that allow for virtual navigation of architectural structures, this multipronged archival approach will invite audiences inside the show and under-the-hood of cutting-edge artistic experiences.
Generously supported by the Robert S. Weil 1940 Fund and the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies. This project is also supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Photo: Marina Levitskaya
Ash Fure
Ash Fure is a sonic artist who blends installation and performance. Called "boldy individual" by The New York Times and "staggeringly original" by The New Yorker, Fure's full-bodied listening experiences open uncommon sites of collective encounter. Fure is an Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College and holds a PhD in Music Composition from Harvard University. A finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Fure also received two Lincoln Center Emerging Artists Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rome Prize in Music Composition, a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Prize, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant for Artists, a Fulbright Fellowship to France, a Darmstadt Kranichsteiner Musikpreis and a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from Columbia University.
Adam Fure
Adam Fure is an architectural designer and an associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He teaches in the areas of digital fabrication, material experimentation and design. His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Chicago Biennial, Beijing Biennale, The New School in New York, the A+D Gallery in Los Angeles, the Architectural Association in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and the Grand Rapids Museum of Art. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2014 Architectural League Prize and a residency fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. Fure received his Bachelor of Science in architecture from the University of Michigan and a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was awarded the Alpha Rho Chi Medal.
International Contemporary Ensemble
The International Contemporary Ensemble strives to cultivate a mosaic musical ecosystem that honors the diversity of human experience and expression by commissioning, developing, and performing the works of living artists. The Ensemble is a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators who are committed to creating collaborations built on equity, belonging, and cultural responsiveness. Now in its third decade, the Ensemble continues to build new digital and live collaborative environments that strengthen artist agency and musical connections around the world. Learn more about the ensemble >
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