The School of Music will host a special spring semester edition of its annual New Music Festival March 1-4 with a featured virtual reality program and experience: “The Key to Time a.k.a. the Shape of Things to Come.”
Film director Roderick Coover teamed up with Kzysztof Wołek, composer and UofL assistant professor of composition, to create a surreal musical, virtual reality romp across time and space that’s been adapted to project onto the dome in the Gheens Science Hall and Rauch Planetarium.
“The idea is the viewer is going to lose himself in the project,” Wołek said.
In the film, Tanek is a young scientist who is trying to make a time travel machine in the 1920s. The character is propelled 200 years forward into a bleak future environment ravaged by climate change and war. The film mixes the genres of science fiction, surrealism, expressionism and opera, sending viewers on a journey into a dream-like world, where Tanek must confront his doppelganger and win back his true love, Anna, to save the world from destruction.
“What is different really, with the new technology, is that you have this combination of the images that are moving, the sound that is all around you and it all moves as you move,” said Coover.
Filmed at the CeTA Studios in Poland, “The Key to Time” features both Polish performers and UofL vocal faculty: Emily Albrink, Katherine Calcamuggio, Jesse Donner and Chad Sloan. The film received the prestigious Adam Mickiewicz Award.
Coover will give a free, public lecture addressing climate change and mass extinction through emerging cinematic arts at 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, in the Chao Auditorium.
Click here to see a full list of New Music Festival concerts, events and lectures.
“The Key to Time” viewing opportunities
Sunday, March 1, 1 p.m., Gheens Science Hall & Rauch Planetarium
Monday, March 2, 3 p.m., Gheens Science Hall & Rauch Planetarium
Virtual Reality Exhibition:
Monday, March 2 – Wednesday, March 4, 8 a.m.-8 p.m., Music Library, School of Music
