Stefan Maier’s Forecast project explores the impact of sound on our physicality—how it transforms our nervous systems and gets to our corporeality’s beating heart. His performative installation questions habitual modes of thinking and interacting with music. The discovery of a unique way to physically engage the audience in his music has transformed his plans for the Festival.
In recent weeks, Maier has been preoccupied with the central challenge of drawing his audience closer to experiencing the full intensity of his musical creations: “I am just starting to enter the phase of seriously working on video components of the performance piece. The gears are turning. Obviously my project has changed quite a bit over the course of the last number of months, especially through speaking with my mentor, Jen. So now it’s really just about the implementation, which for me is a question of putting in the hours, which is a joy, because I love making music.”
“The breakthrough moment has been discovering these subpacs, a wearable technology that pulses sounds through your body. I have so often thought about instrumentalizing the body in an intense way. Much of my music is really loud, really intense, and up to now, this idea of corporeality has always been kind of metaphorical.”
“Actually having sound transduce through your body is totally new terrain. I feel like I’m going to be working with these for a very long time, and I’m really excited about that.”
Photos: Lukas Maier