Oikospiel II: Heat Cantata

Is it a computer game? Is it an opera? Both. It’s Oikospiel, a dog opera in the form of a computer game, devised and created by the American composer and games developer David Kanaga,

described by the press as ‘a mad genius’. Oikospiel Book I, the first part of the opera cycle, was released in 2017 and won several prizes. Oikospiel Book II: Heat Cantata is the first chapter of the cycle’s second part and will have its live world premiere at the Holland Festival. 

Oikospiel is an absurd work of art that pushes at the boundaries of all kinds of artistic disciplines: gaming, music, and visual arts. Exactly as in a normal computer game the player controls a character (or in this case several characters) and takes this character through various worlds. But this game is full of weird and incongruous moments. At one point the player is in an operations room in a plane with a pianist on board. The next moment he or she is at the North Pole surrounded by dogs. Wherever the player ends up there is water, because the ice caps are melting. And at the same time the dogs are supposed to be making an opera. 

One of the most outstanding aspects of the game in this respect is its music: a collage made up of fragments by The Beach Boys, Brahms, Celine Dion, Monteverdi and Wagner, among others, transformed and distorted as soon as the player moves the mouse. Kanaga’s cut-and-paste aesthetic is also apparent in the game’s visuals: an eclectic mix of images, effects and symbols. A theme that clearly keeps returning in this unique story is that of climate change. From this starting point Kanaga has created a work of art with multiple meanings which at one and the same time is innovative, politically aware and incredibly humorous. 

The move into live performance is not as crazy as it seems. Kanaga is a composer and focuses strongly on the musical elements of the game. A recent review of the work has highlighted its importance: ‘If there's a musical tone to Oikospiel, it's pluralism. The digital sheen of MIDI harps bleed into delicate, restrained piano before dissolving in a well of clipped animal and human vocals.’ 

Oikospiel: Heat Cantata takes things even further than Oikospiel Book I. The world of Oikospiel now contains living human voices. These voices belong to the CEO of Oikospiel Opera (Mattijs van de Woerd) and his mother/employee Erde Wolff (Claron McFadden). Both singers interact with ‘a living, thinking sonata’ given shape by the experimental ensemble MAZE, which is known for its performance of unconventional compositions. And the dogs are back again. The one certainty is that everything is possible, and a lapse into craziness is not ruled out.