Die Puppe

François-Pierre Descamps, conductor
Anna Clare Hauf, voice

Serapions Ensemble
Elvis Alieva,
Ana Grigalashvili,
Zsuzsanna Enikö Iszlay,
Julio Cesar Manfugas Foster,
Selina Rosa Nowak (guest),
Gerwich Rozmyslowski,
Mercedes Miriam Vargas Iribar,
Miriam Mercedes Vargas Iribar

PHACE
Doris Nicoletti, flute
Reinhold Brunner, clarinet
Yukiko Krenn, saxophone
Stefan Obmann, trombone
Maria Chlebus, percussion
Iosua Dascal, percussion
Mathilde Hoursiangou, piano
Anna Lindenbaum, violin
Sophia Giodinger-Koch, viola
Roland Schueler, cello
Alexandra Dienz, double bass

Christof Dienz, composition
Kristine Tornquist, director
Marlen Duken, props
Michael Liszt, stage
Jakob Scheid, music automatons & robots
Roman Spiess, Markus Liszt, puppets
Jan Maria Lukas, lights & technics
Germano Milite, sound & video
Jury Everhartz, production

Christof Dienz
Die Puppe. Ein Operoid (2024, UA)
Production sirene Operntheater | cooperation Wien Modern

The artificial human – the doll, the figure, the android – reveals three dreams of humanity: creative power, perfection, immortality.

Since the Stone Age, the likenesses have accompanied their creators and served them as companions, slaves and gods to overcome the inadequacies of organic existence. The dolls of antiquity are animated by imagination, their aura and power lie in the imagination of the doll creators and the viewers. Just two points in a circle are enough to create the illusion of a face, a simply carved piece of wood already marks a figure. Doll creators of the Enlightenment, on the other hand, use complicated mechanics as a drive to obtain a tireless, obedient and deceptively real improvement on the purely natural model. Following the legend of the sculptor Pygmalion, the aim is to fertilize the lifeless artefacts with the spark of life. Where reality and appearance come so close together, the dolls appear alive, but the person himself seems like an automaton. We are puppets, pulled on a wire by unknown forces, Büchner was horrified, nothing, nothing is ourselves.
The Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori coined the term Uncanny Valley in the 1970s: Since then, the fascination has been accompanied by a shudder when the artificial approaches the natural – to the point where a perfect android is considered equal and believed to be alive.
Not only human bodies, but also their voices, their senses and ultimately even their minds are to be artificially recreated. In the data centers of AI projects, the imitative drive is running at full electronic speed. The self-deception succeeds – almost! The technical homunculi are still a long way from the complexity of organic life, no AI has yet passed the Turing test, but the goal is clear: the artificial doppelgangers should not only ape their creators, but be intellectually equal to them, even superior to them – independent creatures, a role model to the role models.
In the dark, however, a scarecrow and a little imagination are still enough to give the material a spirit.

Christof Dienz’s music for the eleven musicians of the PHACE ensemble, Anna Hauf as a wordless voice and the automatic drummer by Jakob Scheid reflects the strangeness in the similarity. Kristine Tornquist and the eight actors of the Serapions Theater illuminate the mysterious relationship between people and their puppets in a silent sequence of scenes.

sirene Operntheater