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Prometheus-2000: On the destiny of Light-Music at the threshold
of new century
International Conference, 2-6 October 2000,
Institute "Prometheus", Kazan, Russia.
Reviewed by V.Basov, Kazan, Russia.
The Ancient myth on Prometheus had been supplemented at the
beginning of XX century with one more myth on Scriabin's
"Prometheus". For the first time in the world music practice the
score of this symphonic poem included "light line" (the "Luce"
line). What is the meaning of note symbols in this line? How does
this light part is to be performed? Is authentic performance
of "Luce" possible (and necessary)? These questions remain to be
topical today. The International Conference "Prometheus-2000",
held in Kazan on October 2000, was devoted mainly to the
appraisal of Scriabin's ideas on the threshold of new century. It
was organized by Experimenta Aesthetics Institute (which is
bearing the same name "Prometheus"). A number of lectures
concerned Scriabin's thematics and were accompanied with video
demonstrations of well known "Prometheus" performances of the
last years, in Moscow, St.Petersburg, Amsterdam, Milan, Genue,
Brussels and other cities. Beside this, the organizers presented
living audiovisual performance under the title "Prometheus:
Scriabin + Kandinsky". Of course, the agenda of five-days
conference was wider than "Prometheus" only. As a matter of fact,
Scriabin's ideas of 'Gesamtkunstwerk" went far beyond that. And
the area of interests of Institute "Prometheus" also is extended
to new modern realms, where side by side with light- and
electronic music there exist more exotic genres of experimental
art - spatial music, abstract cinema, holography, multimedia,
laseriums, computer animation, interactive art. All this variety
of a new art forms was presented at the conference, in accordance
with Scriabin's aesthetic program, which he planned to embody in
his "Mystery" play. One day was fully devoted to discussion on
"color hearing" and synesthesia. As a whole, more then 60 papers
were presented by the participants from Kazan, Moscow,
St.Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Saratov, and by foreign partcipants
from Germany, USA, France, Hungary. The theoretical lectures were
supplemented with demonstration programs "Classics of
light-music", "Light-music performances in the open air",
"Computer light-music". The hosts and guests of the conference
showed concerts for the broad audience - light-music performance
"Alleluia" by S.Gubaidullina, as well as electronic and concrete
music events. Also there were shown the orginal audiovisual
computer performances in a genre of stage multimedia.
The conference book includes, in a Supplement, the complete
bibliography of light-music Russian works since the year 1742,
and the Contents (titles) of all lectures presented at more then
ten previous all-Union, all-Russian and Internatioal symposia and
seminars on light-music, held in Kazan during the last 35 years.
Some of the Conference materials are available at the web site of
"Prometheus" Institute (http://prometheus.kai.ru).
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