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The Nine Lives of Zosimos
Zosimos is a virtually site-specific opera, produced for telematic performance.
The opera is composed by Jostein Stalheim.
The project will be performed in and across four geographic locations that come together May 24. 2026, in Bergen, Berlin, Piteå and Cairo.
Tickets will be avialable soon!
The opera based on site specific explorations and the use of visual documentation, audio field recordings, 360-video and 3D-models. The project explores how compositional and choreographic strategies may enhance the sense of co-presence across physical distance.
At May 24. the performance(s) will happen simultaneous, where actors and musicians at all the four venues play together. It is a very ambitious endeavour, both artistically, technically and when it comes to the performance itself.
Artistic core
Artistic core
The project explores artistic strategies for interaction between musicians, instruments, and audience through the planning, design and performance of Zosimos, a telematic opera. The libretto depicts a journey across time and space, from Egypt in the 300s to present day Europe.
A central challenge is to create parallel movements between past and present as well as between proximity and distance. With the use of telematic technologies, the presence of multiple sites can be created in a live performance.
The project objectives are
to explore artistic application of haptic and sonic interfaces in the creation of a telematic opera
how site-specific explorations may contribute to shaping the narrative in a telematic opera
how such technological and compositional means may contribute to enhanced sense of presence in remote interaction both for performers and audience.
Latest developments
Latest developments
Stage designs – October 2025
Experiments and implementation
Experiments and implementation
The project builds on an understanding of artistic research as grounded in experimentation. The design of laboratory situations is a fundamental building block in which audio and video technologies play a central role for creation, documentation and analysis.
The Zosimos libretto was created in 2014 by Astrid Niebuhr for an opera to be composed by Jostein Stalheim. This libretto serves as a structural grid for the research project. Each scene defines a site-specific exploration, including the choice of compositional and choreographic strategies, interface design, the design of musical instruments as well as tools that enable interaction between instruments and interactive wearables.
The libretto has nine scenes and a prologue, set in different locations in four countries: Norway, Sweden, Germany and Egypt. The methodological design builds on cyclical processes applied similarly on each location.
In stage 1 each site will be explored through field recordings, documentary video and performances and interviews with local artists. All sites will be documented with spherical (360) camera and sound. A spherical camera accommodates virtual presence in remote places, and spheres will be used as backdrop for media objects, and accommodate actors’ virtual presence across multiple locations.
Stage 2 involves a larger team of researchers, where instrument design will have both compositional and scenographic consequences. In stage 2 and 3, individual performers relevant to the scene, will also collaborate in the compositional process. A central compositional challenge is the weaving together of materials from different genres and historic periods.
In stage 3, the design of the dramaturgy for live, telematic performance will be woven together with 360-material, composition of music, choreography and scenography. To create an efficient workflow scenes will be created in a geographical order, starting in Bergen. These processes are documented on video and subject to analysis using stimulated recall. The analysis generates an intersubjective understanding of the artistic processes as it unfolds, and thereby contributes to the design of the next cycle of artistic experimentation.
A continuous process of interface design is distributed across the entire project. This entails creation of telematically distributed instruments, as well as design of interactive textiles and other tools. We explore interface design as an aspect of composition as well as of creating the scenography. This work is largely carried out in studios at HVL. Interface design is carried out in direct interaction with the three-folded process of staging each scene and embraces the artistic creation in the project: field recording, documentary filming, composing choreography and music; testing interfaces through telematic performance; devising the dramaturgy through the design of the live-video, all leading up to the premiere of Zosimos in the final telematic opera production.
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