The 11th Dream, Alain Thibault (December 2024). Excerpt 8:29. Full HD - Stereo. 25’30
The 11th Dream (2024-2025) is part of the cycle of works entitled Five Ultramodern Noh, initiated with Alain Thibault's video work Apollo 11 Dream. It was Inspired by the dreamlike and unconventional form and pacing of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and storytelling of David Lynch’s movies, and Japanese Noh theater. The 11th Dream asks the question: did the astronauts return to earth, or did they remain on the moon, "trans-formed"?
Thibault created the visuals using AI, processed and tightly articulated with his electroacoustic music composition. Using excerpts from the transcripts of this first mission to the moon, spoken by synthetic voices, the overall result is both narrative and abstract, with a somewhat supernatural quality, another characteristic of Noh.
"It was while reading Yukio Mishima's Five Modern Noh Plays that I came up with the idea of creating these Five UltraModern Noh. Space exploration was then considered as "ultramodern", associating in particular the characteristic slowness of the narrative deployment of Japanese Noh theater to the movements of astronauts in space. This first episode takes as its starting point the arrival on the moon of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 mission. The composition revolves around the use of these beeps, announcing and closing the communications of the command center in Houston. These Quindar Tones, lasting 250 milliseconds, had respective frequencies of 2525 Hz when the button was pressed in intro and 2475 Hz when it was released, thus indicating the end of the transmission. Thus, the texts from these transcripts have been faithfully reproduced but manipulated in time, in order to give another meaning to what really happened on the moon. The last quote leaves us with an uncertainty and suggests an alternative ending: "It's quite dark here in the shadow and a little hard for me to see... I'll work my way over into the sunlight here without looking directly into the Sun." Did the astronauts actually return to earth or did they remain on the moon, 'trans-formed'."
The 11th Dream was premiered at WeSA Festival, Seoul, December 2024
The 11th Dream is an expanded version of Apollo 11 Dream premiered at Nemo Biennale, Canadian Cultural Center, Paris, December. 2023
Alain Thibault an electronic music composer and video artist, his works have been presented throughout the local and international scene in several contexts, namely digital art festivals and exhibitions in North and South America, Europe and East Asia. Curator and Artistic Director in the fields of digital contemporary art, electronic music and sound art, Alain Thibault is also the founder of two major events in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), ELEKTRA – an annual festival showcasing performances in digital art since 1999, and the BIAN, International Digital Art Biennale, oriented towards exhibitions, installations and public art since 2012. He is also the initiator of the new EVM XR project, the Elektra Virtual Museum.