Abstract

Penelope is a combinatory sonnet generator film based on Homer’s The Odyssey that addresses themes of longing, mass extinction, and migration, which are not simply relegated to the past. Recombinations of lines of the poem, video clips, and musical compositions produce a different version of the project on each run. Penelope was co-produced by Alejandro Albornoz (Sound), Roderick Coover (Video), and Scott Rettberg (Text and Code). Other contributors to the project include Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra oboist Marion Walker, voice actress Heather Morgan, and actors Helen Amourgi, Kostas Annikas Deftereos, and Sophia Kagadis in non-speaking roles. The video and the text were developed by Coover and Rettberg during 2017 residencies at the Ionian Center for Arts and Culture in Kefalonia, Greece. Kefalonia is reputedly the historic home of Homer. The sound composition was addressed under the procedures of acousmatic music tradition, which in turn continues the aesthetic guidelines and techniques of musique concrète; this background involves the use of collage techniques to create sound structures and discourses using pre-recorded materials which are usually subjected to various transformations. The resulting materials were 80 acousmatic miniatures with a duration of 20 seconds each, and 10 transitions of 20 seconds each. All these compositions are subsequently combined by the algorithms in the same way as the texts and video clips. Each audio clip was individually composed to create a balance between diversity and coherent unity.