This multimedia performance of Mountain Witch was filmed at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in Sydney, Australia with the Mind at Work light and sound chandelier. It depicts one scene from my opera, The Ghost, at the intersection of electroacoustic and spectral music, the story of which I wrote following the arc of Greek tragedy. The gallery was repurposed from a coal power plant and the industrial space captured both the setting of this scene and the spirit of the original venue in Berlin after two years of Covid cancellations. The light and sound sculpture is an Internet of Things artwork using fifty networked devices (Raspberry Pi). The colors and patterns of movement were derived from the dramatic context of the opera and the mimetic framework underpinning my spectral attitude. Transitions between states of sounds/matter (liquid and gas, in a process of evaporation and condensation) are represented aurally, visually, as well as literally. The electronic musician performs using Max for Live and Ableton Push 2.

This scene follows the tragic hero entering a nightclub inside an underground city. In the previous scene, he took an entheogen (a reference to the origins of Greek tragedy in the Dionysian mysteries and rites). In this altered state of consciousness, the soprano—the Jungian Shadowed Anima of the male tragic hero and of the city—appears to him as he enters the crowded dance floor. From passive to middle to active voice, she emerges with the power to bring his repressed negative inner emotions and insecurities to the foreground. As the composer, librettist, sound designer, dramaturg, and conductor of this work, staging this scene with the performers and light sculpture brought about a unique interdisciplinary collaboration that was documented as practice-based artistic research in an article for Leonardo.

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