Live Electronics – Max Savikangas, Composer and Violist

Trailer of the radio space opera Posthuman (Ihmisen jälkeen), premiered on 29th March 2024 by
the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE Radio 1 channel and now available on the online platform YLE Areena. Photos: Maarit Kytöharju

“No pity. No trace. No memory.
No park named after them.”
Machine (tenor) in the 5th Scene of Posthuman

Composition: Max Savikangas
Libretto and direction: Teemu Mäki
Sound design: Anders Wiksten, YLE Radio 1 Finland
Production: Soila Valkama, YLE Radio 1 Finland

Radio version 2024

The radio version is now available for listening on the Ääniversumi (Soundverse) series of the YLE Areena online podcast platform:

The First Act
The Second Act

The radio version was broadcasted on the Finnish Yle Radio 1 Channel;
the First Act was broadcasted on March 29th 2024 and the Second Act on March 31st 2024.

About the opera

What happens when post-human beings conduct an experiment in which human genes and memes are put into a non-human child?

What comes after man? If anyone remembers us, what can they know about our species? What do they think of our civilizations? Are post-human beings more advanced than humans, and if so, what does that mean? Are they smarter and more powerful than us, or more compassionate and selfless than us? Are they corporeal, individual beings or a stream of bits or tendrils with no sense of separateness?

Our opera deals with these questions and in that sense is a posthumanist work. On the other hand, it also deals with quite traditional human questions: What is it to be human? Why are we the way we are? What are we aiming for by making children? What does the world of adults look like through the eyes of a child? Where has the human species reached so far and what is next? What is it to be mortal? What would we be like if we were immortal?

We also ponder these questions because the ongoing sixth mass extinction is our fault. If we don’t want to become extinct, we have to change. What can we learn from a birch, a machine, a fog, a child and, for example, a slime fungus called Physarum polycephalum?

This radio piece is based on the opera premiered in the Pannu Hall of the Dance House Helsinki in March 2023. The radio version has the same music as in the original work, but the interludes are new, with the help of which you can follow the story without seeing the events.

World Premiere: March 3rd, 5th and 7th 2023
Dance House Helsinki
Musica nova Helsinki Festival

The premiere was given in Finnish with both Finnish and English subtitles.
Future performances can be localized with translated subtitles to the local language and English subtitles.

Posthuman Teaser 2

Posthuman Teaser 1

In the field of art music, surprisingly, only one major science fiction opera had been composed, Karl-Birger Blomdahl’s Aniara (1959) based on Harry Martinson’s poem of the same title, to a libretto edited by Erik Lindegren.

After the enormous progress of science and technology in sixty years, we wanted to make a serious, multi-artistic science fiction opera of the 2020s that would utilize the latest scientific research data and performance technology.

Man is extinct. Posthuman beings, nonhumans, have evolved so far that some of them have reached immortality and the ability to live without bodies.

Nonhumans conduct an experiment: they put human genes and memes into one of them, Child (Tuukka Haapaniemi, bass). The experiment goes wrong because Child gets too comfortable in human form: he does not want to end the experiment.

Nonhumans argue about what should be done.

One of them is Machine (Petri Bäckström, tenor), who initially considers the test dangerous and wants the test to be stopped and all results destroyed.

Second of them is Birch (Reetta Ristimäki, soprano), who is the commissioner of the experiment and also wants to interrupt it, but keep the results.

Third of them is Fog (Susanna Tollet, mezzo-soprano), mother of the non-human Child used in the experiment. She doesn’t want to interrupt the experiment as it would kill Child.
Excerpt of the opera synopsis by Teemu Mäki

Photos from the premiere of Posthuman (clik/swipe to browse). Photographer: Maarit Kytöharju / Musica Nova Helsinki 2023

Posthuman (in Finnish Ihmisen jälkeen) is a multi-artistic 2-hour science fiction chamber opera with my music, which was composed during 2020–23 with the kind support of the Kone Foundation. The style of the work can be described as poetic dystopian drama.

Posthuman is a multidisciplinary opera, where different art forms come together equally, inspired by the latest scientific research data. In the story, posthuman beings conduct an experiment in which human genes and memes are put into a nonhuman child. The goal of the experiment is to learn about the now extinct man, but things go horribly wrong…

The performers include a conductor, four soloists, an AI soloist, 4-member choir, two dancers and a 10-member instrumental ensemble. Both singers and instrumentalists are amplified and manipulated by live electronics and spatialization.

“Hi Mama, Mama,
I saw a dream.
In the dream
I was a human.”
Excerpt from the 1st Scene
(libretto Teemu Mäki,
English translation Ida Hansen)

The libretto is written, by my request, by the multitalented Finnish visual artist, director, poet, writer and Doctor of Fine Arts Teemu Mäki (above), who also directed and visualized the premiere, which was given in March 3rd, 5th and 7th 2023.

I have countless backups
in almost all known galaxies
and I remember every life…
…I would like to remember,
I remember bits and pieces of a lot of them.
I don’t remember what they felt like.
I wish I could remember more,
know what I can’t remember
and feel everything.
Excerpt from the 4rd Scene
(Libretto Teemu Mäki,
English translation Ida Hansen)

The venue of the premiere was the rough and hard-edged, post-industrial and high-tech equipped Pannu Hall of the new Dance House Helsinki. The premiere was produced by The Finnish Chamber Opera and Greta Productions as part of the Musica nova Helsinki Festival 2023.

The premiere was given in Finnish with both Finnish and English subtitles. Future performances can be localized with translated subtitles to the local language and English subtitles.

What comes after humans? If anyone can remember us, what will they know about our species? What will they think about our civilization?

The premiere was conducted by József Hárs (above), one of the most talented and energetic conductors of our time.

The hand-picked cast of the premiere consisted of superb professionals: soloists Reetta Ristimäki, soprano, Petri Bäckström, tenor, Susanna Tollet, mezzo-soprano and Tuukka Haapaniemi, bass, ensemble of a vocal quartet with singers Heta Kokkomäki, Airi Nazezian, Martti Anttila and Jussi Linnanmäki, dancers Meri Pajunpää and Anna Stenberg from the Petri Kekoni Company, with choreography by Petri Kekoni, and a 10-member orchestra.

The production utilized contemporary and innovative staging methods and technologies and was designed and realized by a group of invited top young professionals in their fields.

The lighting was designed and realized by Erno Seppälä, the science fiction costumes by Iida Ukkola and the computer graphics and generative visuals by Calvin Guillot & Małgorzata Nowicka in collaboration with the macigs.fi project, a joint effort of three major Finnish universities – Aalto University, University of the Arts Helsinki and Tampere University – to form a network of infrastructures to accelerate research into the virtualization of humans and their surroundings, specifically applied to immersive and naturalistic remote presence.

Are you interested in music, dance, theater, or visual arts? What about poetry, philosophy, politics, or posthumanism? If the answer is yes, then our performance for vocal soloists, choir, ensemble, electronics, dancers, text, images, and light is perfect for you!

Reviews

I was fascinated by the diversity of sound worlds…Sounds in themselves become material actors, whose open and unpredictable eventfulness inspired me…What kind of sound spaces and sound events are created by the voices of living people, tones, instruments, as well as an artificial intelligence soloist and live electronics! Such a combination manipulates, transforms, echoes, stretches voices and sound in the same way as the human figures of the dancers stretch, turn and contort in the video projections of the work. Such a lovely gesture! A deviation is when something deviates, slips to the side, does not stay within the agreed limits. There was a sonic whirring here that steeled the auditory senses. The piece awakened a desire for unexpected sound events.
Hanna Helavuori’s Blog 12.3.2023

The music of the twelve clearly demarcated episodes is engaging, and when the soloists and quartet choir get up to speed, it raises chills. While the stylistic scale lives steplessly from contemporary opera to rap and spiritual, the 10-member orchestra led by József Hárs is also supported by echoes of the future produced by artificial intelligence.
Tuomas Rantanen, Voima Magazine 6.5.2023

Savikangas’ music sometimes reaches for 20th-century modernism, and sometimes a drum kit hits, to which one of the soloists raps. Finally, the spiritual classic Motherless Child is sung…The most musically impressive were the parts where Savikangas skilfully combines the parts of four soloists and a four-person backing choir.
Vesa Sirén, Helsingin Sanomat, 4.3.2023