Breathless Moment pilot [2013]

Plot
Breathless Moment is paraphrasing the antique story about Iphis and Anaxarete as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Bk. XIV, 698-771): The cold hearted princess Anaxarete ignores the wooing and persistent declarations of love from the young man Iphis. Finally he gives up and hangs himself broken hearted. Anaxarete is punished by the Gods and ‘the stone that had long existed in her heart possessed her body’ – she is turned into stone.

Moment
The app is shaped as a frozen moment in time. The user experiences and explores this moment and unfolds the drama gradually by moving around in space. The frozen moment describes the public funeral procession for Iphis. He is lying dead on a bier with his mourning mother next to him and the crowd following them. Away, in an apartment window Anaxarete is watching as she is turning into stone. This is the first moment of her breathless eternity.

Story

A square/corner in present day London. A funeral procession for Iphis takes place in the middle of the space. Iphis is placed on a bier with his mother next to him. Further away Anaxarete watches the scenery from an apartment window as she is turning into stone. This is the moment in its entirety. The user is only able to access limited parts of the space at a time, though. That is how the drama unfolds and the story is told – not in time but in space. We call such a limited part of the grand space a ‘Zone’ within which the user can move freely.

Breathless Moment Pilot is a Klejs & Rønsholdt production and it is commissioned by The Royal Opera House, London as a research project, produced in collaboration with CAVI, DR’s Radiokor and EditionS and will be available as an App in the future.