Play!

Musical play, KV 516f
Musical director: Marcel J. V. Kieslich
Musical interpretation: KR 5-2 arc HW (industrial robot)

End of play: Wayra Aguilar, Joseph Browne, Stephanie Därr, Emanuel Gollob, Thiago Kondo, Lu and Lily Ludwig
Advisors: Thomas Ballhausen, Bernadetta Czapraga, Lucia D’Errico, Konrad Hempel, Claudia Lehmann, Christoph Reuter, Maya Purdue, Franziska Wallner and many more.
With the kind support of Creative Robotics (Johannes Braumann, Amir Bastan, Emanuel Gollob, Karl Singline), Grand Garage (Lukas Thauerböck) and KUKA AG (Shaloun Weisseneder).

It was probably in 1787 on a convivial Wednesday evening in Vienna’s Botanical Garden that Mozart’s “Musikspiel” (KV 516f) came into being. A combination composition consisting of 42 bars assigned to different letters. The game principle “Give me a name and I’ll give you a composition” develops as an exercise in musical improvisation on the piano.

In the installation Spiel! new compositions are constantly being created, which are interpreted by an industrial robot on the grand piano. In performative interventions, performers complement these improvisation exercises together with the robot. Between intimacy and vulnerability, the artistic research project questions our relationship to technology.