Revived echoes opera augments research results

Chelsea Wald, contributor

Dancers in futuristic catsuits are avatars for an ancient tribe (Image: Kurt Hoerbst)

Archaeologists combine state-of-the-art opera with research into acoustics to recreate an ancient sound stage

A "MEDIA opera" that features state-of-the-art audio-visual technologies, Pitoti: Echoes of the Echoes hovers somewhere between being a research report on rock art and an artwork in itself.

The research focuses on findings that use acoustics to explain the positioning of 4000-year-old rock paintings around their valley home of Valcamonica in northern Italy.

A musical performance, then, is an apt choice for augmenting more traditional forms of publishing. Film-maker and archaeologist Frederick Baker, co-director of the multidisciplinary Prehistoric Picture Project (PPP) that is behind the venture, says he thinks this is an absolute necessity. "A paper is such an impoverished experience compared with the experience of research. How do you present the results of archaeoacoustics? Well, you present it as sound."

Background information on the project is provided at the opening of the half-hour spectacular at Austria's St P?lten University of Applied Sciences by Christopher Chippindale, archaeologist at the University of Cambridge and PPP co-director. In front of projected images of the research site, he describes the scientists' discovery of the immense complex of Copper Age rock engravings - called pitoti in the local dialect - in the early 1900s.

As the researchers grapple with the rock art's meaning, mysterious dancers arrive on stage, dressed head to toe in futuristic catsuits from Dutch fashion designer Anouk Wipprecht. A Viennese dance troupe, Pitoti Tribe, has been created especially for the production by Brazilian choreographer Lua Virtual. They strike awkward poses similar to those of the animated rock-art figures projected behind them, inviting us to wonder whether the prehistoric artists were chipping out pictures of the prima ballerinas of their time.

This inference is essential to understanding the researchers' thoughts about the valley. Working with musicians at the research site, they found that areas of concentrated rock art had special acoustic qualities - in particular, powerful echoes - that may mean those areas were used as sound stages. The prehistoric music could have been created by banging rocks together, as the troupe in the opera does. One catsuited figure even tap dances.

Of course, Baker and his collaborators aren't suggesting that ancient people tapped. Instead, "we try to... give the audience as it is today similar impressions and feelings that people had in former years when they carved these figures", says composer Hannes Raffaseder of St P?lten University. "It's about experience and emotion."

Raffaseder's pervasive score brings together surround-sound recordings from the research site, stone-on-stone percussion, a live choir, and a cow horn made and played by "archaeomusicologist" Albin Paulus. "People in [the Valcamonica] region still use this cow horn," Raffaseder explains.

September's performance was a proof of concept, Baker says. Elements of the opera will be incorporated into an experiential exhibit; the plan is to take it to both Cambridge, UK, and Milan, Italy, in 2012. Ultimately, the team hopes to take the show back to its birthplace - the valley of Valcamonica.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/195f15b6/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cculturelab0C20A110C10A0Crevived0Eechoes0Eaugment0Eresearch0Eresults0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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