Chapter 2 - 'Librettising' Astrophysics to create The Flowering Desert
2.1 Introduction
2.4.f Characterising the TRAPPIST-1a star: The Mother Star
The Mother Star was not in the original short story as a character in the opera, as I had envisioned it more as a physical/musical object. This was to reflect the concept of sound itself (in particular the universal sound Ohm) as a source for the birth of the universe in Hindu tradition (Graves & Guirand, 1968).15The idea of sound being a source of creation also connects with concepts which equate matter and energy in twentieth-century physics. Initially I had conceived of the Mother Star being present in the piece as this sound only; however, after initial workshops with students and discussions with Daniel we agreed to add the Mother Star as a sung character. The star exists as a causal object within the story. It lives in a different timeline to the other characters and so acts as an object they interact with, but does not have an arc itself. This is due to the properties of the star TRAPPIST-1a itself. As a red dwarf it has longevity. These stars could live for hundreds of billions of years.
TRAPPIST-1a is a youthful example as the star has not yet reached its middle age (Burgasser & Mamajek, 2017). It is also very cool at a temperature of 2,511 K whereas the sun is 5,778 K. It has a limited visible light radiance but strong emission of other radiations (hidden in the shadows) and its luminosity is 0.05% of that of the Sun (TRAPPIST-1, 2019).
The Mother Star character is a vital part of the transformation of Pantele, constantly attacking and meddling with it. Being young itself it is not aware of the effect it has on Pantele, or even aware of Pantele’s existence around it. It is much more concerned with itself. This can be seen in scene 2 when Pantele fails to get the Mother Star to listen during the Brutal Mother and Forgotten Child duet, and in scene 3 when the Mother Star attacks Pantele (with a protonic bombardment) for disturbing it. As described in the extract from scene 3 below, the more teenage-like age of the star in relation to its total life span is reflected in its spotted (acned) surface.Please go to timecode 00:11:25 (second half) (below at p. 8-9, lines 185-200).
“The Mother star like an irritated teenager is suffering a constant convection and burning. It laments its spot covered surface. This makes the cries and anxiety from Pantele, and the meddling of Xoe, even more frustrating. It lashes out by releasing a bombardment of protons on Pantele.
Mother Star:
Look there, and there and there -
Another spot!?
A darkish flare?
This mournful magnetic mass
In constant repair.
Pantele:
(Self)
As I let my mother pull me
My skins crack to release a moan
Active and sore to my core
A heated tidal bulge
Mother Star:
Now what is that I hear?
Something buzzing at my ear?
This proton punishment you’ll see
For failing to just leave me be!
Mother Star choir the directs a painful bombardment at Pantele.
Pah ha ha ha
Poh ho ho ho
Pih hi hi hi
Ultimately it is a potential source of energy for life and also a source of inspiration for the astrophysicist. It is the backdrop to the transits and without it the planets would not be visible. As such it is almost a gateway to the external world. In this sense it is like the persona, as it is the façade of the system. When referring to mythology to understand the Mother Star I highlighted two stories. In the Chinkookan Sun’s myth the sun is represented as an analogy for invading colonisers in the Americas (Hymes, 1975). This subversion of the traditional sun symbol makes it almost demonic when its power is not used correctly. This was a nice reflection of the kind of unloving mother it appears as in The Flowering Desert, whose radiation has the potential to destroy Pantele’s hopes for life.
In Greek mythology Demeter was said to not have fed Demophon as a baby, but instead to have breathed on him softly, anointing him with ambrosia and at night hiding him in the fire (Graves & Guirand, 1968). Through this treatment he grew to be like a god. The harsh field of X-ray and UV radiation from TRAPPIST-1a is analogous to Demeter’s breath, and the intense heat of the fire in the cold night is analogous to the tidally locked frozen and hot sides of the planets around TRAPPIST-a. This parental, but cold, treatment unwittingly led to the creation of a man of strength and honour, just as TRAPPIST-1a's brutal treatment of planet-e (due to the proximity to the star) may actually be part of what is required for planet-e to host life. Psychologically for the character of Pantele the cold detached nature of the Mother Star from Pantele provides further reason to look beyond the TRAPPIST-1 system for a sense of identity and purpose.
In scene 2 the Mother Star ignores the pleas of Pantele to listen to its exciting and life-changing news. The star's text is repetitive and process driven. As the character of the star is the least emotional, and lacking in narrative, the text for it was open to a more direct use of science. This scene in particular was based on the metallicity of the star as the process of fusion converts the hydrogen to heavier elements towards the star’s core. The metallicity of TRAPPIST-1a in particular is not yet known so I used more general information about the metallicity of similar stars of the same type (Mann et al., 2013)). At this moment the star is almost non-teleological, and is in a chemical, musical and lyrical rotation which seems infinite in comparison to the timeline of humans or even of the Earth. It is also comical in its presentation of the various different elements it is creating, using word play to deliver these elements with a sense of grandeur to the audience.
Through the process of workshopping and discussing this scene (alongside referencing some of the initial musical and performative explorations of the character) Daniel and I both decided that the Mother Star should not have any lyricism to it. It shifts harmony in blocks of rhythmic and melodic material, and involves the use of a pompous sprechgesang alongside hocketing to create a sensation of endless process, interference and bombardment. Daniel requested some extra dialogue in sections where the Mother Star would be speaking and not singing. It will be sung by a 4-part SATB chorus. Some elements of the vocal score would be recorded and played through the planetarium’s 5.1 speaker system. This would both convey the character of the star as well as giving it a greater sense of size, beyond the performance space itself. The Mother Star’s movement generated in the first cycle (which can be seen in the film of scene 2 in appendix AP 1.4.b) was also based on this sense of timelessness. The costumes are almost monk-like, reflecting the sempiternal nature of the performer's tasks within the star. Tadas’s initial ideas had been to represent the Mother Star with images of quarries and stones, to reference the deep geological time of the Earth. With Leon and the restrictions of his tools, we chose to make use of a more mechanical looking design, which rotates in an industrial fashion, showing the endless burning of fuel and constant work that the star is undergoing. Please now go to timecode 00:27:10 (first half) to see a performance of this scene (p. 5-7, lines 101-151).
Scene 2
This section begins with focus on Mother Star slowly bringing focus to Pantele as it calls to Mother Star. Xoe will be moving, in its orbit, around Mother Star and begin returning to Pantele.
Pantele’s “self” cannot see Xoe very clearly, on its eventual return, due to the brightness of the Mother Star.
Mother Star sings but never answers. It exists in a different realm to Pantele and so struggles to understand or take notice of Pantele. However, Mother Star is always both giving to and attacking Pantele, through heat and radiation.
Brutal mother and forgotten child duet
Here the Mother Star chorus represents the fusion and metallicity of the star. It sings about the hydrogen fusion in a self-obsessed and conversational manner.
Mother star:
Hydrogen 1 meet Hydrogen 1
Hydrogen 2 meet Hydrogen 1
Helium 3 can’t meet Helium 3
If they find their reflection
They flee in the other direction
Hydrogen 1 meet Hydrogen 1
Hydrogen 2 meet Hydrogen 1
Helium 3 can’t meet Helium 3
Oh, Iron I say
You look feral today
Pantele:
Mother, can you hear me?
Something happened to us.
Mother Star:
Hydrogen 1 meet Hydrogen 1
Hydrogen 2 meet Hydrogen 1
Helium 3 can’t meet Helium 3
Lithium is missing
Hydrogen is kissing
Pantele:
Mother I’m ecstatic
There’s something so fantastic!
Mother Star:
Hydrogen 1 meet Hydrogen 1
Hydrogen 2 meet Hydrogen 1
Helium 3 can’t meet Helium 3
Out struts Titanium Oxide
The cool M Dwarf guide
Pantele:
Mother, can you listen?
I discovered my ambition
Mother Star:
Hydrogen 1 meet Hydrogen 1
Hydrogen 2 meet Hydrogen 1
Helium 3 can’t meet Helium 3
Vanadium Oxide - so amorphous
Rather dense and rather formless
Pantele:
Mother, can you hear me?
This might be momentous!
Mother Star:
Hydrogen 1 meet Hydrogen 1
Hydrogen 2 meet Hydrogen 1
Helium 3 can’t meet Helium 3
Good evening mistress silicon
You’ve almost reached the central dome
Pantele:
Mother listen to me!
You’re being so unruly.
Mother Star:
Hydrogen 1 meet Hydrogen 1
Hydrogen 2 meet Hydrogen 1
Helium 3 can’t meet Helium 3
Such metals make a chill
Through round rouge ruddier fill
Mother star starts singing again and Pantele interrupts with increasing frustration
Mother Star:
Hydrogen 1 meet Hydrogen 1
Hydrogen 2 meet Hydrogen 1
Helium 3 can’t meet Helium 3
Pantele:
Mother don’t ignore me!
Your child has so much anxiety
Mother, for once - please hear me!
Pantele collapses with exhaustion over its attempts to communicate with Mother Star.
2.4.f.i Considering the direct use of data in creating Mother Star
In order to better understand the process of analysing the data from telescopes I spent some time researching the use of machine learning to process the data. This is not something that was required so much for the TRAPPIST-1 discovery; however, it will be vital to unlocking knowledge of exoplanetary systems around all types of stars in the future. I found that the way telescopes capture information about transits can often produce an image that has a large amount of noise, and requires algorithms to find the transit patterns within it. The process of filtering the noise down to the useful information has philosophical resonances with constructivist thinking. Having just researched Naum Gabo and the use of constructivism for another piece, it seemed fitting for me to include this metaphor as a poetic layer within the libretto itself.
Initially I worked on developing a poetic metre based on the transit data as Daniel had let me know he was developing the score this way; however, after researching this aspect of astrophysics I decided against this approach to the work. I did not feel that creating a sense of rhythm based on the metre and emphasis of the text would help the audience to feel the processing of the data. As the data was so irregular and long it was unlikely it would even be noticed by the audience, especially once the text had been set to music. It seemed that it would be better to use this concept of form in some way to reveal the important parts of the text (as the important parts of the data also become revealed). I came up with several ideas for how to achieve this, but finally I decided that the Mother star should appear initially cacophonous, erratic and in parts unintelligible, until a climactic point at which we would finally realise what the star was saying. This would be aided by making the Mother Star a chorus, and so allowing for overlapping voices. In order to convey this I created a new text for the character, which can be seen and heard below. This is an example of a digital artefact created in Step 1 of the work with The Flowering Desert as referred to in the section 1.3.c.i. After creating this work Daniel also sent me some scores to record and experiment with, finding ways of using the system’s natural resonance in the music and sound of this character, replicating an ongoing and endless process. The exploration of this concept (see example 1 below) in the form of an initial libretto for collaboration with the composer, made up a large amount of the work done on the Mother Star in the first cycle. After having worked with this material on the triple study we decided to let go of the musical material. However, we kept the text in part 2, using it as an element in the projections of the overture, and the poem in part 3 as a spoken element recited by the Mother Star during the overture. Below you can find the libretto and recording shared to express my thought process around the Mother Star character to my collaborators in the first cycle.
Example 1
Chorus of Mother Star
This is a chorus of at least 4 singers. Together this chorus is the character – Mother Star. The music will emulate the star. The sounds of the chorus are expressive of the coolness, radiation luminosity and heat of the star.
The libretto for this chorus has been written in 3 stages as there are the stages to the chorus itself. The first stage is representative of the sound of creation, the second stage represents the timeless processes of fusion occurring inside the star alongside the proton bombardment from the star (much of this longer text is an incomprehensible revolution of redness), and the final stage shows us the star itself.
Mother star:
1. M-Dwarf (could be hummed)
2. Emulating proton bombardment and ultraviolet radiation through noise/sounds which break apart these words.
Parent
Child
Kind
Endless
Eternal
Young
Common
During this section there can also be an ongoing long and overlapping reading of text such as:
Crimson wrinkles from cadmium candles.
Burnt with an umber flame and scorched in scarlet seas.
The yellowing fades to ochre.
Vermillion rivers burst beige damns
And furies of mauve turn scarlet to brown.
Spinning not through space, not through time.
Spinning knots through space, knots through time.
Energy that stretches space, energy that stretches time.
Time that whirls in disintegral space,
Disinterested space.
Trips of fancy, trips of minds.
Tripping over shadows, tripping over stones, tripping past oceans.
Oceans made of ignited dust.
Twirling dancing passing over.
Pause.
Go on.
It doesn't matter when you stop or start
Twirling.
Dancing.
Pause.
Go on.
Did you just start or stop?
If you stopped then I’ll start again.
If you start I might never end.
Twisted crimson candles and cadmium wrinkles.
Scorching umber burnt the scarlet sea.
Flooded vermillion beds drown the broken beige.
And all the furious purple faces will soften soon to brown.
Keep on spinning, not a lot of knots in space.
Stretching and squashing transactions of energy.
Transactions of time.
Disintegral space and disinterested time.
Pause.
Go on.
3. Dictation:
I the Mother Star
Parent, child and carer
Kind and endless source
An axis of the eternal
Young but older than most
Common but barely observed
I the Mother Star
Listen to audio sample of this here:
Despite the fact that the initial concept for the Mother Star was lost over the cycles, the work developed above for the first cycle was vital to help begin the process of creation among all participants. We used the material above, and recordings made by Daniel of his initial sketches, in several of the workshops during the first cycle. This allowed us to create a joint understanding of the character of the Mother Star leading to the creation of the costumes and movement, which would remain until the final performance in the third cycle.
