Mortalities is a necroaesthetic VR opera, investigating the intersection between VR, performance and opera.
The work, besides challenging the format of opera by offering a novel virtual opera, examines the borders between life and death, and between live and digital.
Without our characteristic ability to transcend and form ideas about death, the reality is unanchored and without purpose. 

Artistic director: Rebekka Sofie Bohse Meyer 
Composer: SØS Gunver Ryberg 
Librettist: Ursula Andkjær Olsen 
Visuel artist: Ninna Steen
VR-developers: MANND
3D Artist: Quad studio
Producer: Lars Vind Andersen
Singers: Anne Kristine Skov Andersen, Katinka Maria Frida Bohse Meyer, Kirsten Voss, Stephen Yeseta, Mathias Monrad Møller, Mikkel Tuxen
Production Company: Jakobe Performing Arts
Co-producers: Copenhagen Opera Festival and S/H Teater
Venues: S/H Teater and Aarhus Musikhus

Why VR?

The theme of death is accustomed to the genre of opera. As Heidegger states: Death is a part of the live. Death is a possibility that is never realized. Everything we do is related to the possibility that we can die. Death encapsulates life.
Through virtual reality, we can approach death by physically stepping into different death scenes and become immersed for a while – until we step out again.  
Being able to move freely in a virtual world provides the chance of sensing the body anew, as one needs to relearn to navigate, move and touch objects in a foreign environment. Thereby the senses become activated, and as the sense of sight has been dominating, the participants must now rely on their senses of hearing and touch to let the components of the opera guide them through the experience.
 

Inspiration

The theme is inspired by Mikkel Krause Frantzen’s theory on ’necroaesthetics’ presented in his text ’Ligvariationer’ (Mortalities). Necroaesthetics is not necessarily the story of an actual death, but tries to present the state where boundaries between life and death are negotiable - and with the development of technology, even more so. According to Frantzen, three components constitutes a necroaesthetic work: the affectivity of grief, a paradoxical temporality and a spectral materiality. The affectivity of grief revolves around the mentality of mourning, a paradoxical temporality is the understanding of time as not necessarily a linear phenomenon but as anachronisms and displacement of future, present and past. The spectral materiality represents that which is gone but still is. It could be the dying body, the corpse where the person is mentally gone but still physically present.
Necroaesthetic works help to treat the death as something inherent in all of us, but still foreign to us. We are surrounded and penetrated by death and still, it is something we deny or reject as it is impossible to understand because no one knows what will happen when we die.
Cultural researcher Jakob Matzen suggests looking at death from a range of different perspectives. He divides necroaesthetics into six categories: the spectral, grotesque, transcendental, self-destructive, post-human and architectonic necroaesthetics.

The spectral necroaesthetics: the ontological understanding of death, trauma and history. It is the haunting and presence of ghost-like existences hovering between substance and phenomena.
The grotesque necroaesthetics: is the psychological and sexual dynamics. It is the exceedance of boundaries and the process from dying to death. It revolves around the corpse as it represents physical and bodily death. There is an almost erotic fascination of the degenerated body - a fascination of flesh and blood.
The transcendental necroaesthetics: is the metaphysical understanding of death. Our fictional imagination and the exceedance of our own experience might result in obtaining transcendence with the possibility of experiencing immortality. It is the manifestation of death in the living where boundaries between life and death are fluid.
The self-destructive necroaesthetics: suicide is what distinguishes us from most animals. This category questions how self-destructive actions might tip the balance of power in society. Who has the power over one’s life and death? Suicide and self-destructivism are active actions that represents the reluctance to live and the need of self-determination.
The post-human necroaesthetics: is when boundaries between technology and biology, between life and death, are negotiable. It represents the will and ability to prolong life. According to the perception of death in the Western world, we try to keep death distanced from our lives and if we can, in denial.
The architectonic necroaesthetics: is the spatial manifestation of necroaesthetics on an urban level. For instance, in the form of monuments and/or objects. It is understanding necroaesthetics on a global and political level.

Dramaturgy

The opera is a linear experience consisting of virtual spaces presenting each a musical compositions. 
Besides the six rooms, there will be a physical room prior to and after the virtual journey. They will function to prepare the participants for the transition from reality to virtual and from virtual to reality.
The dramaturgy operates with a home-away-home model, beginning in the physical world where the participant is prepared via taking-on-the-equipment-ceremony before being let into the virtual underworld. Afterwards they are transitioned back to reality via a physical room and prepared to be let out from the experience.
A narrator (the companion of death) guides the participant through the dramaturgy. He receives the participants in the physical room and enters the virtual with the participants. This means he shows up as a virtual character in the virtual world where he will guide the participants by popping up occasionally.


Experience model

The virtual experience takes place on a 100 square metersspace divided into four smaller spaces.
Besides the virtual space, the experience exists of two physical rooms for on- and off-boarding.

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The opera – step by step

The Ouverture - Preparing the participant


The experience begins in a preparation room where the companion
of the death while singing, welcomes 4 participants and introduces
them to the upcoming experience. Hereafter, the participants are
dressed in VR-equipment by a human handler through a dressing
-ceremony. In the meantime, the companion of the death prepares
the participant for entering the virtual world in the ouverture.









The transition from reality to VR

Entering the virtual world, the death’s companion now appears as a
virtual character. In the virtual world he guiides the audiences across
a brigde leading to the underworld. Walking on the bridge the
participants will feel the sensation of the wooden boards squeaking
under their feet.
The underworld consists of 6 necroaesthetic spaces that presents
each their musical composition and virtual design.














The spectral space

- represents the haunting and presence of ghost-like existences that, in a mixture of flesh, blood and spectral volatility, manifest a unique stage between life and death, where the common boundary of life and the eternal darkness of death are suspended.

The self-destructive space

-  is an isolation and self-practicing violence aesthetic. It means isolation to the surrounding society.  A monotonous, depressive and empty self-image and worldview makes the death seem closer and the will to live is suspended. The power above one’s life and existence is restricted but can be recaptured by self-destruction and/or suicide.





The grotesque space 

-Simultaneously attractive and repelling. The word ’grotesque’ is connected to the word ’cave’ deriving from Italian ‘Pittura grottesca’. The cave is considered as dangerous and labyrinthine. It is home for the banned and the taboo and represents the mixture of the comic and the uncanny, of flesh and blood and degenerated bodies.  

   
   

The transcendental space

-a metaphysical aesthetic representing stages of existence on transformation. Aesthetic figures penetrating human boundaries mimes a stage of non-existence – of immortality. It is the prolonging of life and conservation of immortality – a manifestation of the death in life.




























The architectural space 

- when death becomes institutionalised. It expands to a political and global level. How can we understand urbanity from a necroaesthetic perspective? Bio power, war and necropolitics are ways to kill. Who has the right to let live or let die? The empty space can be understood a hauntologicial possibility and monuments become materialised/objectified death.

The post human space 

- a special kind of post-biological aesthetic. It is when the existing surrounding and self-eradicating society denies its mortality. Technology and biology meet in the image of a dying body that is kept alive. The boundaries between life and death are negotiable as the decaying body lives on.

    

 





The final 

After 40 minutes the death’s companion appears to
get the participant back to life through the bridge.















Back to reality

In a physical room, the finale is performed while the participants are
helped off the VR equipment. The finale also helps digest the
experience and prepare them to exit the opera.