Sound installation-performance


“Olympian Machine” is a work for 12 voices, presented as a radiophonic sound installation consisting of 12 loudspeakers. During the recording, the participants of the piece were invited to the sound studio for one hour. Each individual was read a brief summary of Homer's “Iliad”, after which each participant was asked to comment on what (s)he remembered from the text that (s)he had heard. Various personal deviations from the text of “Iliad” were welcome, but not encouraged in any way, seeking to preserve the spontaneity of the subjective associations. This piece presents to the audience a polylogue of voices that review issues of history, memory, and communication.


“<...> In addition to every myth ever told, there is one more, the not nameable, untold one. The other, which keeps waving from the shadows, emerges only in the form of allusions, fragments, and coincidences, without anyone who would dare to tell it as a single story.” (Robert Calasso, “The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony”)


In 2019 Arturas Bumšteinas was awarded special prize for the innovative and original solutions at the Lithuanian professional theatre awards – “Borisas Dauguvietis Earring” for the integration of audible experiments into new theatre forms (for the performances “Olympian Machine” and “Bad Weather”).



Creative team


Author of idea and sound editing: Arturas Bumšteinas

Sound recording director: Ramūnas Jasutis

Sound engineer of the performance: Ignas Juzokas

Video projection by: Ervinas Gresevičius

Producer: Operomanija


Participants: Darja Lyzenko, Daumantas Ciunis, Domas Raibys, Eglė Strackaitė-Kalendra, Greta Grinevičiūtė, Karolis Vyšniauskas, Kristina Agintaitė, Marija Simona Šimulynaitė, Marius Povilas Elijus Martynenko, Mindaugas Urbaitis, Rūta Junevičiūtė, Žilvinas Andriušis



Press


Bumšteinas has compiled the philosophical, humorous or phantasmagorical utterances of 12 people, revealing embarrassment, resentment or excitement into a collage of meanings, opinions, timbres and moods. Olympian Machine is a kind of a memory research that unveils how the same themes, words, names, emotions or associations repeat themselves in the narratives of different people.

Rasa Murauskaitė, Kultūros barai


Olympian Machine purifies and presents the “fluctuations” of human thoughts. On the other hand, these collective and, at the same time, highly individual reinterpretations of facts raise doubts regarding humanity’s ability to understand each other. And overall, is it possible to hear, remember and understand what is being said?

Vaiva Martišauskaitė, menufaktura.lt

Olympian Machine is a sensitive, multilayered, ironic and dynamic piece, proposing an hour of musical directing of monologue and continuous shifting of meaning.

Aušra Kaminskaitė, lrt.lt


Strange. At the end you leave those poor speakers as if they were close people. And Iliad, which found you unprepared at the beginning, seems to be not so distant. Bravo and bis.

Jūratė Visockaitė, Literatūra ir menas


Duration: 60 minutes

Première: April 17, 2018, Arts Printing House, Vilnius, 7th Contemporary Opera Festival NOA (New Opera Action)

In Lithuanian without surtitles