Nabaz'mob, opera for 100 smart rabbits
by Antoine SCHMITT and Jean-Jacques BIRGE
Filmed by Françoise Romand
nabazmob.com
A coproduction Violet - Web Flash Festival,
created at the Centre Georges Pompidou on May 27th 2006
after an original idea by Guylaine Monnier
Choreography and music by Antoine Schmitt and Jean-Jacques Birgé
ARS ELECTRONICA Award of Distinction Digital Musics 2009
100 Nabaztag smart rabbits, brought by their owners, did meet at Centre Pompidou, in the same spirit of the flashmobs, to all play together an opera specially composed by Antoine Schmitt et Jean-Jacques Birgé.
Inviting John Cage, Steve Reich, Conlon Nancarrow and György Ligeti, this musical and choreographic score
in three movements, transmitted via wi-fi, plays on the tension between the orchestral ensemble
and the individual voices to create a strong and involved showpiece.
This opera questions the issues of working together, organization, decision and control,
which are increasingly central and difficult in our contemporary world.
Schmitt and Birgé are respectively the behavior designer and the sound designer of the Nabaztag rabbits constructed by Violet.
They have chosen to twist the industrial object into an artwork in which the choreography of the ears,
the play of light and the hundred loudspeakerspetits hidden in the stomachs of each rabbit
create a composition with three voices built on time delay and repetition, programming and disrespect for rules.
