Andreas Eduardo Frank: HYPHEMIND

is a hybrid music theater: a real-virtual expedition into the whimsical world of fungi. What can we learn from the specialists of symbioses and their mycelial networks? What do our human ideas of individuality, intelligence and society look like from their perspective? Can we overcome the crisis of the Anthropocene with them and come to new forms of coexistence between humans, nature and machines?

The music of Andreas Eduardo Frank takes up the text of Matthias Rebstock and lets the most different styles collide in a virtuoso way. It plays with wit and power, with pop elements, analog synthesizers, shimmering soundscapes and through-composed light and video sequences. Like the mushrooms, the music is the medium of symbiosis and mediates between text, the analog visual language of Sabine Hilscher, AI-controlled animations by Niklas Berlec and the stage action.

Between presence and online performance, the online audience can establish contact with the hall audience, the performers and the unknown world of mushrooms through polls and online games. A digital-analogous wattle grows, which wants to connect with the mushroom mycelia to a cross-species network, the HYPHEMIND.

HYPHEMIND is a piece development in which text, music, performance, graphics and web design were created simultaneously and closely related to each other over a series of rehearsal phases.
Andreas Eduardo Frank and Matthias Rebstock