DARK WEB
A music-theatre collaboration between Michiko Saiki and Frauke Aulbert, performing works by female composers.
"In this performance, the audience will witness different states of human emotions and the lack thereof. Despair and hopes, from emancipation of female expression in the Romantic era to futuristic utopias of reproduction – a wide range of themes are interwoven and told in a non-linear narrative. These partly autobiographic experiences are presented from a female perspective.
In addition to the performers’ own works, there will be works by young composers such as Tatiana Gerasimenok (commissioned work), Sarah Nemtsov, Beste Özçelebi and Jue Wang as well as an arrangement of a song by Fanny Hensel/Mendelssohn. The music is combined with electronics and video as well as the human body as an instrument."
Michiko Saiki, Japanese pianist, and Frauke Aulbert, German soprano,
discuss Tatiana Gerasimenok’s piece “sancti888”:
SANCTI888
February 7, 2021
TATIANA GERASIMENOK: RITUAL MUSIC
Sandris Murins Asks Tatiana Gerasimenok
Sandris Murins: How has your music changed over the years?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I started out by composing deathcore music and performing pop music. Then I learned Western musical notation and composed sheet music in the academic tradition. Later I created textual instructions for performers, giving them the right to choose their instrument and the freedom to express themselves without much restriction. At this time, I began studying at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory as a composer. At that period, I perceived art as the human body, and music as one of the sensory organs of that body, as hearing. Gradually, I became interested in engaging the other senses of the audience — sight, smell, touch, taste, and the vestibular apparatus. So I added other artistic mediums to music and began to work with the senses of the human body as instruments of a musical ensemble, which led me to the experience of synthesizing the arts.
Sandris Murins: What do you fear most as a composer?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: As a composer, my biggest fear is the inability to speak freely about what worries me as a human being. Without the ability to express oneself freely in the realm of art — which preserves ideas and makes them available for others to reflect upon, thereby strengthening their critical thinking and the power of reason — there can be neither true creativity nor intellectual growth. Such freedom of expression in art, as well as the sublimation of internal experiences, is essential for psychological health, safe coexistence, and is a fundamental element in the development of humanity.
Sandris Murins: Why do you still compose?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I compose because creativity is one of the tools for self-discovery and exploring the world around me. My personality and my perception of reality are embodied in my artwork, serving as a unique illustration of the circumstances I experience as a human being. Existential questions can be explored through many different mediums — art, genetic engineering, programming, human creation, politics, building an interplanetary transport network, etc. Through my own actions in the field I choose, I contribute to and improve the area that interests me most.
Sandris Murins: What is the signature of your pieces?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I describe my music as a ritual and a dose of infernal high. I like to study Homo sapiens as if it had just emerged from the womb — without culture, language, or prior experience of being in a new space. I am fascinated by exploring the universal human language: crying, coughing, laughing, moaning, facial expressions, and body movements. I perceive these primary signals of the human body as pure energy through which it broadcasts its inner state and communicates with the environment.
Sandris Murins: What are the future trends in music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Future trends are shaped by events affecting most of the population, such as ecology, the need for new ethics, the regulation of emerging technologies, protection from discrimination, and everything related to the question of our coexistence on this astronomical object.
The pandemic, a major trend in 2020, has pushed us to move more confidently to online platforms. This shift is unlikely to disappear, as it is part of the broader adoption of new technologies. Moving online also helps address overconsumption. As long as we flood the Internet and our minds, the planet will have time to heal.
Sandris Murins: What is your composing process?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I start by formulating my task, then I study the chosen topic, consulting both official research and opinions shared on social media. I analyze the information I gather, select sound, visual, and other materials suitable for this work, and then create a system based on this material.
Sandris Murins: How does technology influence your music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: It’s wonderful that technology has become widely accessible at affordable prices. It allows me to express my ideas more precisely and across multiple dimensions. With the advent of various audio and visual editing programs, as well as tools like phone cameras and voice recorders, the technical side of the creative process has become easier.
Sandris Murins: How has the music landscape changed in recent years?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Music has shifted from the composer having complete control over the performer to granting the performer significant freedom within key boundaries. With the rise of improvisation, unfixed instrumentation, and approximate musical notation, the performer essentially becomes a composer. Composers increasingly collaborate with non-professional musicians.
There is a fusion of the arts taking place. The composer becomes a multi-artist. Professional musicians become multi-performers, actors, dancers.
There is experimentation with space, placing musicians and sound objects in different parts of the room. Musicians descend from the stage and are positioned among the audience. The composer invites the audience to interact with the musicians, influence their actions, and become part of the piece, making contemporary classical art more democratic. The audience becomes the performers.
Performances are no longer confined to concert halls — they appear in shopping centers, nightclubs, and private parties. Art has infiltrated everyday life, seeking to erase boundaries and merge with daily experience. Composers also collaborate with scientists and programmers.
Technology has enabled composers to rehearse with musicians and discuss projects online, allowing them to move away from expensive, crowded capitals. Institutions, festivals, and social constructs have lost their relevance, equating professional composers and amateurs.
Sandris Murins: How has the audience changed over the last years?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: As part of the audience, I can say that due to the open access to a lot of information on the Internet, people have become very educated. With the huge flow of unfiltered information coming online, people have developed a new type of perception such as clip thinking. This has also influenced the way authors deliver information in order to express their idea as short as possible. Audience attention has become more expensive and insatiable. Scrolling through apps accustoms the brain to instant gratification while searching for information. This accelerates a person’s info metabolism, resulting in nothing remaining in the memory. Thus, neither Trier’s new movie nor flying to Mars becomes an event in this flow.
Online activities, such as visiting museums or courses, are becoming increasingly beneficial because they save travel time. If it’s a concert recording, you can rewind the tape or click on the beginning, golden ratio and end to catch the idea. Or watch a lecture at 2x speed and have complete control over the information coming into your head.
The world has already moved from an offline platform into new territory. It was as if we had just left the womb and moved into a new space.
As long as the Internet has no clear restrictions, no code of law, no Digital Testament and no division into states like Facebook, Google, YouTube, it will be a zone of temporary freedom and equality. So Lady Gaga’s Instagram live broadcast may be less popular than the dog’s TikTok account. And when the rules are systematized, the restrictions, institutions, expertise, and the whole hierarchy that shapes our offline activity will appear in the online space.
Sandris Murins: What are the future trends in music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Problems that prevent people from living often become trends, because by highlighting them, we find solutions. Everyone can think about what worries them personally and start highlighting it.
I find it fascinating that pre-Internet music, regardless of its historical, cultural, or genre origin, becomes ideologically compressed and automatically updated in the context of the Internet, giving it new life. When creating music for the Internet, one must consider not how it will sound in a concert hall with armchairs, but how it will appear on a viewer’s phone screen, perhaps sitting in a closet, and how it will sound with or without headphones.
The relevance of the offline world will not disappear, but it will become an extension of the Internet — a renewed and exciting field for multisensory experiences. Gradually, virtual reality devices will become publicly available, and offline spaces will expand with VR venues where artists can experiment with new technologies and the audience can actively participate in these experiments.
Sandris Murins: What does new music need?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Academic systems of art education were developed in a pre-Internet environment. The time has come to rethink these systems and expand research topics to new branches of human activity.
Sandris Murins: What is the basic conceptual idea behind multimedia music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: The idea is to make the impact on the audience more informative per unit of time — essentially, to intensify the impression by engaging multiple channels of attention. Multimedia music refreshes the perception of sound by combining it with other art forms, especially digital ones, expanding the compositional field beyond traditional music, and experimenting by merging independent arts together.
Sandris Murins: What are your favorite multimedia works?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I appreciate all of them.
Sandris Murins: How does multimedia composition differ from other types of academic music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Multimedia music uses more tools — and more modern tools — to realize an idea.
Sandris Murins: What is a good musical composition for you?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: If I have a task and I can get the necessary tools to accomplish it.
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I started out by composing deathcore music and performing pop music. Then I learned Western musical notation and composed sheet music in the academic tradition. Later I created textual instructions for performers, giving them the right to choose their instrument and the freedom to express themselves without much restriction. At this time, I began studying at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory as a composer. At that period, I perceived art as the human body, and music as one of the sensory organs of that body, as hearing. Gradually, I became interested in engaging the other senses of the audience — sight, smell, touch, taste, and the vestibular apparatus. So I added other artistic mediums to music and began to work with the senses of the human body as instruments of a musical ensemble, which led me to the experience of synthesizing the arts.
Sandris Murins: What do you fear most as a composer?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: As a composer, my biggest fear is the inability to speak freely about what worries me as a human being. Without the ability to express oneself freely in the realm of art — which preserves ideas and makes them available for others to reflect upon, thereby strengthening their critical thinking and the power of reason — there can be neither true creativity nor intellectual growth. Such freedom of expression in art, as well as the sublimation of internal experiences, is essential for psychological health, safe coexistence, and is a fundamental element in the development of humanity.
Sandris Murins: Why do you still compose?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I compose because creativity is one of the tools for self-discovery and exploring the world around me. My personality and my perception of reality are embodied in my artwork, serving as a unique illustration of the circumstances I experience as a human being. Existential questions can be explored through many different mediums — art, genetic engineering, programming, human creation, politics, building an interplanetary transport network, etc. Through my own actions in the field I choose, I contribute to and improve the area that interests me most.
Sandris Murins: What is the signature of your pieces?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I describe my music as a ritual and a dose of infernal high. I like to study Homo sapiens as if it had just emerged from the womb — without culture, language, or prior experience of being in a new space. I am fascinated by exploring the universal human language: crying, coughing, laughing, moaning, facial expressions, and body movements. I perceive these primary signals of the human body as pure energy through which it broadcasts its inner state and communicates with the environment.
Sandris Murins: What are the future trends in music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Future trends are shaped by events affecting most of the population, such as ecology, the need for new ethics, the regulation of emerging technologies, protection from discrimination, and everything related to the question of our coexistence on this astronomical object.
The pandemic, a major trend in 2020, has pushed us to move more confidently to online platforms. This shift is unlikely to disappear, as it is part of the broader adoption of new technologies. Moving online also helps address overconsumption. As long as we flood the Internet and our minds, the planet will have time to heal.
Sandris Murins: What is your composing process?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I start by formulating my task, then I study the chosen topic, consulting both official research and opinions shared on social media. I analyze the information I gather, select sound, visual, and other materials suitable for this work, and then create a system based on this material.
Sandris Murins: How does technology influence your music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: It’s wonderful that technology has become widely accessible at affordable prices. It allows me to express my ideas more precisely and across multiple dimensions. With the advent of various audio and visual editing programs, as well as tools like phone cameras and voice recorders, the technical side of the creative process has become easier.
Sandris Murins: How has the music landscape changed in recent years?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Music has shifted from the composer having complete control over the performer to granting the performer significant freedom within key boundaries. With the rise of improvisation, unfixed instrumentation, and approximate musical notation, the performer essentially becomes a composer. Composers increasingly collaborate with non-professional musicians.
There is a fusion of the arts taking place. The composer becomes a multi-artist. Professional musicians become multi-performers, actors, dancers.
There is experimentation with space, placing musicians and sound objects in different parts of the room. Musicians descend from the stage and are positioned among the audience. The composer invites the audience to interact with the musicians, influence their actions, and become part of the piece, making contemporary classical art more democratic. The audience becomes the performers.
Performances are no longer confined to concert halls — they appear in shopping centers, nightclubs, and private parties. Art has infiltrated everyday life, seeking to erase boundaries and merge with daily experience. Composers also collaborate with scientists and programmers.
Technology has enabled composers to rehearse with musicians and discuss projects online, allowing them to move away from expensive, crowded capitals. Institutions, festivals, and social constructs have lost their relevance, equating professional composers and amateurs.
Sandris Murins: How has the audience changed over the last years?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: As part of the audience, I can say that due to the open access to a lot of information on the Internet, people have become very educated. With the huge flow of unfiltered information coming online, people have developed a new type of perception such as clip thinking. This has also influenced the way authors deliver information in order to express their idea as short as possible. Audience attention has become more expensive and insatiable. Scrolling through apps accustoms the brain to instant gratification while searching for information. This accelerates a person’s info metabolism, resulting in nothing remaining in the memory. Thus, neither Trier’s new movie nor flying to Mars becomes an event in this flow.
Online activities, such as visiting museums or courses, are becoming increasingly beneficial because they save travel time. If it’s a concert recording, you can rewind the tape or click on the beginning, golden ratio and end to catch the idea. Or watch a lecture at 2x speed and have complete control over the information coming into your head.
The world has already moved from an offline platform into new territory. It was as if we had just left the womb and moved into a new space.
As long as the Internet has no clear restrictions, no code of law, no Digital Testament and no division into states like Facebook, Google, YouTube, it will be a zone of temporary freedom and equality. So Lady Gaga’s Instagram live broadcast may be less popular than the dog’s TikTok account. And when the rules are systematized, the restrictions, institutions, expertise, and the whole hierarchy that shapes our offline activity will appear in the online space.
Sandris Murins: What are the future trends in music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Problems that prevent people from living often become trends, because by highlighting them, we find solutions. Everyone can think about what worries them personally and start highlighting it.
I find it fascinating that pre-Internet music, regardless of its historical, cultural, or genre origin, becomes ideologically compressed and automatically updated in the context of the Internet, giving it new life. When creating music for the Internet, one must consider not how it will sound in a concert hall with armchairs, but how it will appear on a viewer’s phone screen, perhaps sitting in a closet, and how it will sound with or without headphones.
The relevance of the offline world will not disappear, but it will become an extension of the Internet — a renewed and exciting field for multisensory experiences. Gradually, virtual reality devices will become publicly available, and offline spaces will expand with VR venues where artists can experiment with new technologies and the audience can actively participate in these experiments.
Sandris Murins: What does new music need?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Academic systems of art education were developed in a pre-Internet environment. The time has come to rethink these systems and expand research topics to new branches of human activity.
Sandris Murins: What is the basic conceptual idea behind multimedia music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: The idea is to make the impact on the audience more informative per unit of time — essentially, to intensify the impression by engaging multiple channels of attention. Multimedia music refreshes the perception of sound by combining it with other art forms, especially digital ones, expanding the compositional field beyond traditional music, and experimenting by merging independent arts together.
Sandris Murins: What are your favorite multimedia works?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: I appreciate all of them.
Sandris Murins: How does multimedia composition differ from other types of academic music?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: Multimedia music uses more tools — and more modern tools — to realize an idea.
Sandris Murins: What is a good musical composition for you?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: If I have a task and I can get the necessary tools to accomplish it.