alter_01

alter_01 is a musical composition by Jascha Jakob Hagen, which is being played by a large-scale human-machine sculpture. Combining physical sensors, electric motors, a metal frame, and a cello, it creates a holistic aesthetic experience of sound, stage design, and light.

Inspired by J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash, this concert performance explores the increasingly close relationship between humans and technology. At its core is an ambivalent and speculative relationship of the two actors, oscillating between cooperation and competition, threat and promise.

During the performance, the performer Alina Trionow is attached to a prosthesis-like structure made of metal rods, which functions both as a constraint and a technical extension of her body. The framework makes it difficult for her to play her instrument, and the sounds are generated by motors and electromagnets attached to it. Repetitive strikes, overtone-rich drones, and haptic friction noises produce a raw sonic language that poetically spins a fiction of the machinery’s own life.

This work is a further development of the project Alter Piano (2022–24) and is conceived as a series of works. The stage setting—consisting of metal posts, metal rods, and connecting pieces—remains consistent throughout the series, as do the digitally controlled electric motors and the use of various types of microphones and speakers for amplification. alter_01 explores the boundaries between concert and installation, as well as our relationship to the rapid technological progress of the present day. //