Unbounded

Symphony in A major , KV 201
A project by Sophie Thammer

Idea and concept: Sophie Thammer
Direction and production: Sophie Thammer
Music analysis, musical concept and music direction: Sihua Ren
Motion design and animation design: João Levenzinho

Project supervision: Claudia Lehmann and Konrad Hempel
Spot On MozART Project Supervision: Thomas Ballhausen

Unbounded describes a transformation process of Mozart’s Symphony in A major KV 201 into a new graphic language, inspired by natural colours, structures and agricultural processes in a field. After examining Mozart’s biographical background and the period in which the piece of music was composed, it can be assumed that Mozart’s gaze fell through his carriage window on his week-long journeys to wide meadows and agriculturally cultivated fields. Did the colours and structures of nature, the meadows and fields, and also the structuring of the fields through agriculture inspire Mozart to compose the Symphony in A major? Are there any similarities between the natural impressions, agricultural processes and the design, the structure of the said piece of music? In close collaboration with the music theorist Sihua Ren, we first developed a musical analysis of the piece Symphony in A major KV 201, and based on this we designed a new, graphic score. In parallel, many documentary as well as free-artistic photographs, videos and collages of field structures and agricultural cultivation processes were created. These works, as well as the works of the Italian photographer Mario Giacomelli, served as inspiration for a seven-minute animated film, which makes the graphic score perceptible in the form of a gradually developing painting, whereby the various parameters from the music were assigned to agricultural machines or their tracks, which move on the filmic frame.