The Philharmonie Project
(Bruckner: Symphony No. 5, movements 1 & 4)
Exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2011 (photographed by Richard-Max Tremblay)
Exhibition view, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2011 (photographed by Richard-Max Tremblay)
Single-channel video installation with sound: freestanding screen construction, custom seating, and speakers | 2011 | 50:00
Filmed during a performance of Bruckner’s 5th Symphony by the Berliner Philharmoniker Orchestra, The Philharmonie Project (Bruckner: Symphony No. 5, movements 1 & 4), reconfigures the protocols of backstage, performance, spectacle, and audience. Instead of showing the orchestra, the work features the video production team of the Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall as they film the concert for live broadcast using six cameras controlled remotely from a studio housed above the hall. Each technician performs a specific role, calling out numbers corresponding to the bars of music, the cameras, and the cameras’ positions, as they translate the musical score into a choreography. Bruckner’s music acts as both an extension of the technicians’ performance and its dramatic soundtrack, heightening the tension conveyed by the action.
We see nothing of the performance on stage; we see only its mediation laid bare in the projection, which juxtaposes four continuous, unedited shots, mirroring the multicamera display systems used for broadcast. Two fixed cameras present close-ups of key team members: the “conductor” reading and counting out the score to cue the changes of shot, and the camera operator, who controls all the cameras remotely on a console. Two more cameras wander around the studio, revealing the video operator, who switches live camera feeds, and the camera assistant calling upcoming camera positions to the camera operator. Like the camera shots they orchestrate, the team move together and intersect, performing almost as a single composite entity, like the orchestra itself.
Credits
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Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major:
Performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Bernard Haitink, on March 12, 2011. -
Appearing:
Daniel Finkernagel & Alexander Lück (Directors), Volker Striemer (Camera Operator), Uli Peschke (Vision Mixer) -
Cinematographer:
Daniel Sippel -
Camera:
Lynne Marsh -
Sound Recording and Mix:
Johannes Krämer -
Gaffer:
Lars Oelmann -
Editing:
Mathieu-Bouchard-Malo -
Color Grading:
Christoph Manz -
Production Support:
Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall Team -
Funding:
The Bambi Foundation, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and University of Hertfordshire
Related Texts
Extra Visible Dimension: Lynne Marsh's The Philharmonie Project (Nielsen: Symphony No. 5)
Author: Rosemary Heather
PROGRAM | initiative for art + architecture collaborations, 2012
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