An interactive installation and instrument where opera singers and audience members can perform the aria “This is The Nucleus”.

The Vocal Chorder allows performers to create music through pushing, leaning on, and bending wires. When a person steps into the Vocal Chorder, its wires also enable full-body interaction to explore the sounds and the interactive pyramid projected in front of the performer. It is a visualization of the child in Ray Bradbury´s short story “Tomorrow´s Child,” born in another dimension and only perceivable by its parents as a pyramid.

The work and the instrument were originally constructed when Carl was Artist in Residence at Den Anden Opera in Copenhagen, during March 2004. Carl had a vision of an interactive interface that would allow him to create accompaniment with the body, to make it possible for an opera singer to step outside the prevalent hierarchic structure of the operatic art. The singer/ interactor plays The Vocal Chorder by stretching, pulling, leaning on and manipulating the wires which in turn both controls the accompaniment and the blue pyramid floating on a black wall outside the installation. The Vocal Chorder has been developed in several different versions, where audience and performers can play the instrument in various ways.