Mutations on Metropolis

SuperCollider and Hacked Electronics
Stereo
2004

This piece was created as part of a larger project co-ordinated by Moving on Music. It involved four composers from the Belfast area composing a new soundtrack to accompany an edited version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Each composer was given a 20 minute section of the film to work with.

My section of the film contains a number of important scenes, including the first introduction to the robot and the fantastic transformation scene where the heroine (Maria) is kidnapped and the robot is given her looks.

The villian of the movie, Rotwang the crazed inventor, is a very misunderstood figure! He simply wanted to create a machine which could do the work of men, which would not tire and which would not need to stop for food. It would not talk back, take sickies or disobey orders. Ok, so he kidnapped a beautiful young girl who was preaching love and forgiveness to all of the workers and replaced her with an evil robot which preached destruction and hatred, but we all have our little faults and he was only obeying orders...

In this spirit, I decided to create an entirely electronic soundtrack which combined electronic sounds generated using SuperCollider with other live sounds from "hacked" items like radios, kids toys etc. A number of sensors were also used to track the movements of the performer and feed them into SuperCollider. The result was a highly technical but theatrical piece.