Cézanne’s Doubt

.Sets for opera, Cézanne’s Doubt, composed by Daniel Rothman, computer controlled interactive video projections

Performances

Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jerse, 1998

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Californi, 1998

Scottish Rights Hall, Oakland, Californi, 1998

Merkin Concert Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City, New York, 1996

Steirischer Herbst International Festival of Art Graz, Austri, 1996

California Institute for the Arts, Valencia, Californi, 1995

Performed by The Rothman Ensemble  electronics by Kent Clelland, cellist Ted Mook, clarinetist David Smeyers, and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith

Cézanne’s Doubt is an opera by the composer Daniel Rothman. The piece takes its title and inspiration from an essay by the philosopher of Phenomology, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In his essay Merleau-Ponty examines Cézanne’s obsession with painting and the act of seeing. Cézanne’s desire was to paint nature objectively, as it exists. His doubt and fear was that form of his work was the result of an artifact of his vision. Merleau-Ponty argues that we always exist in this state of perceptual doubt —that we cannot witness the world as it is. The world presents itself as such and we construct it through our process of cognition and perception.

The set for the opera consists of a large-scale video projection behind the performers. The performers in the piece are four musicians and voice. Video cameras are focused on them. A computer processes images of their movements and translates them into “clouds” of color that float across the image. These “clouds” are woven together with prerecorded video images stored on the computer. The stored video images are gathered from the site where the piece is being performed.

The artist controls all of the elements of the sets real-time. Watching the performance unfold, the artist manipulates all the effects on and changes in the image. These effects include the degree of noise in the image; the combination of images; the size, color, movement and speed of the clouds. The video set differs in each performance because of the interactive and site-specific elements. The images are designed to create perpetual doubt in the eyes and mind of the viewer by being on the edge of a fully recognizable form. The viewer witnesses images in the flux of becoming and disappearing.