OPERAーAndroid Opera Scary Beauty for BMW

BRAND

2022

Keiichiro Shibuya performed his android opera at the National Art Center Tokyo for the event “FORWARDISM BMW THE SEVEN Art Museum” presented by BMW. With Keiichiro’s piano and electronics, 40 orchestra and humanoid robots Alter4 played three music at the party.

New National Museum Tokyo

Date : Nov 15th 2022 at 7:00pm
Venue : New National Museum Tokyo

PROGRAM

M0: Opening

M1: Scary Beauty

Interval: Speech by Alter4

M2: The Decay of the Angels

Interval: Improvisation between Shibuya’s piano + Alter4

M3: Midnight Swan

CREDIT

Composition, Concept, Direction, Electronics: Keiichiro Shibuya

Vocals: Alter4

Orchestras

Android Programming: Shintaro Imai

Sound: Yuki Suzuki

Lighting: Wataru Kawasaki

Visual: Kotaro Konishi

Stage Manager: Kazuya Kushimoto, So Ozaki

Project/Production Manager: Natsumi Matsumoto

Production

ATAK

Android – Alter4

Belonging to Osaka University of Arts – Art Science Department
Android and Music Science Laboratory (AMSL)

Design supervised: Hiroshi Ishiguro

Music supervised: Keiichiro Shibuya

Programming: Shintaro Imai

Pedestal design: Kazuyo Sejima & Associates

The Android Opera Scary Beauty is the world’s first opera performed by an android, in which the android conducts a human orchestra and sings simultaneously. The android autonomously decides the tempo and dynamics of the music, and the human musicians can only follow its lead. This opera starkly illustrates the “humanity that can only survive by being subjugated to the technology it has created”—a metaphor for the transitional relationship between humans and technology.

Composed and played by Keiichiro Shibuya, the opera features extreme changes in tempo and dynamics, which surpass human imagination and provoke an intense range of vocal expression. The android autonomously determines these shifts, sometimes drawing out new possibilities in the composed music, while at other times, pushing it toward potential destruction, as the music progresses.