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GERMANY – Autosymphonic celebrates 125 years of the automobile
The city where Carl Benz invented the automobile witnessed a grandiose multimedia spectacle. At the world premiere of “autosymphonic” in Mannheim on September 10th, in addition to the musical composition, video and laser shows were major constituents of the staging. The event was staged by photographer and video artist Horst Hamann, a native of Mannheim, media designer Thomas Gerdon, and tarm Showlaser GmbH’s laser specialists.
The 20,000 attendees witnessed a plethora of music, light, laser effects, and images in the heart of the city. Its water tower was repeatedly bathed in a rash of the most fascinating of colors, while laser beams, split-second synchronized to the music, streaked across the night sky.
Recurrent highlights were the total of 800, various, automobile sounds, such as the slamming of car doors, the screeching of windshield wipers, or the din of wheel rims beaten with drum sticks, played correspondingly to symphonic-orchestra instruments, that composer Marios Joannou Elia had integrated into his work that melded the whole into an aural experience of a kind that had never before been heard.
That experience was closed out by an orchestral crescendo, paired with the rising noise of an engine running and the sight of a water tower outlined by laser beams – the rousing finale of a multimedia show worthy of the 125th anniversary of the invention of the automobile.