AUDIOKAUKAS by Arturas Bumšteinas

The radio drama “Audiokaukas” by Arturas Bumšteinas was inspired by books published by Eridanas Publishers in the Science Fiction Classics Series and the TV programme “Videokaukas” broadcast on Lithuanian TV in the 1990’s. Arturas devoted several years to the reading of books from the series and watched the films demonstrated in the “Videokaukas” programme. He drew the inspiration for the script from over more than a hundred books read and films watched.

The script of the “Audiokaukas” is a peculiar concentrate of Fantasy literature in the form of a story combined by collage. It is an episode of several days and nights in the life of a young talented cook, Denisas. At the beginning the protagonist’s everyday life is depicted in fragments his extrovert, hedonistic character (Denisas = Gr. Dionysos). The defining moment in the story is when Denisas, cooking one of his dishes, suffered food poisoning caused by false morel (Lat. Gyromitra esculenta). Further on in the story, the effects of poisoning do not appear at once; they are slowly disclosed to the audience.

While reading a science fiction book Denisas finds himself in the world described in the text and experiences incr/edible events depicted there. He is awakened from his hallucinatory trip by a telephone call. The host of a radio talk show invites Denisas to take part in it. He agrees and brings to the live broadcast a collage made up of extracts from a hundred science fiction books, which he introduces as his cookery book that he has being writing lately. He reads extracts from his “book” and is transferred again to the world of hallucinations, this time he takes all the radio listeners together onto a trip. These trips to the fantasy worlds are descriptions of various creatures and their interactions with the protagonist woven from the tiny text fragments. Denisas’ cookery book text touches upon the subject of consumerism and aggressive exploitation of different life forms.

Another “Audiokaukas” character is the fictive composer Apolonijus Polonskis (Apollo). He is an acousmatic creature. A sound body that flourishes in acoustic space without much narrative context; its voice is accompanied all the time chamber music allegedly written by Polonskis (Bumšteinas composed it according to the descriptions of sounds from the fantasy books).

Although the performance consists of two hallucinatory “trips”, one of which is vegetarian, the other – carnivorous type; the play does not pursue any vegetarian-didactic goals.

A 13’44 long excerpt from the “Audiokaukas” was included in the double CD “Pole Reports from Space” released in 2014 by Bôłt Records for sound tracks of science fiction and contemporary interpretations in Eastern Europe. It also includes music by Krzysztof Penderecki, Edward Artemiev, Eugeniusz Rudnik, Zdeněk Liška and other composers.

sound art and music

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