Ellipsis

Ellipsis was a public event for the Summer Solstice featuring an installation with visual elements and music at the Acquario Romano, dedicated to the City of Rome by collaborative artist team Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel (then fellows at the American Academy in Rome). The audience was invited to experience the continuous work at any time between sunset and midnight.

A large grand piano, concealed within an intimate forest of laurel trees, stood at the center of the large elliptical space. A constellation of 4,000 water-filled glasses surrounded the piano, covering the ground floor like the reflection of stars in a lake. Twenty-three singers stood evenly spaced around the first balcony, lit in silhouette by a light slowly orbiting behind them. Each held a small strobe light, which they triggered to spark at random intervals throughout the evening’s event.

Composer Edmund Campion began playing the world premiere of a new solo piano work written for the occasion at exactly the moment of sunset in Rome (21:36.) The music was composed in several highly virtuosic toccatas punctuated by fantasy interludes that incorporated the voices of the New Chamber Singers, directed by Keith Griggs.

Intermittent visual elements punctuated and augmented the evolving sequences, animating the space. Small black stones fell into a brightly lit mound of white powder at even intervals, causing small explosions of dust in the light. A spherical armature revolved in the air above the grand piano. The audience itself was in constant motion, strolling in one direction and observing the work from around the elliptical balcony above and from the floor beneath.

Ellipsis was a meditation on the inevitable passage of time. The building, an architectural folly, was the inspiration for the work.