Monster Mash

Arizona Daily Wildcat digital images by Kleiser-Walczaj Construction Co. These are some images from the 3-D Opera Monsters of Grace , which will be at Centennial Hall tonight

Monsters of Grace, which will be performed at Centennial Hall tonight at 7:30, is a 73-minute, computer-animated "digital film/opera," parts of which are rendered in 3-D (glasses will be provided), set to the live accompaniment of the contemporary composer Phillip Glass. Glass's credits are long, but suffice it to say that his experience in pushing the limits of music and art as a composer are unmatched. Robert Wilson, who acted as director and designer of the film portion of Monsters has worked with Glass before in their groundbreaking 1977 film and musical score, Einstein on the Beach.

Glass, in an interview with Bill Jones of ARTBYTE Magazine (October/November 1998) explained his and Wilson's collaborative process:

"Often we begin by talking through a piece, and then the music follows and the staging follows that. So generally speaking the collaboration takes that form - going from image to music to stage."

In fact, the computer-generated imagery which is played on a screen above Phillip Glass and his orchestra - which includes a handful of people dressed in black playing keyboards and a vocalist or two - was not completed until hours before Monsters of Grace's premiere in New York. Therefore, much of the musical inspiration came from Wilson's simple line drawings and their conceptual program.

"That process is one I'm familiar with" said Glass in the interview, "and I had no trouble working with Bob's drawings. I didn't see the actual look of the projected images until the first week of the performances. That's just the way it had to be."

Glass's musical inspiration, aside from Wilson's imagery, includes the musings of the 13th century Sufi mystic poet Jalaluddin Rumi. Rumi blends the erotic, the pragmatic, and the deeply religious in his words, words which are integrated into the lyrics of some of Glass's pieces.

Klieser-Walczak Construction Company, the computer graphics firm responsible for the images in Monsters of Grace, also created the computer-generated stunts in the films Stargate, Clear and Present Danger, and Judge Dredd. Because of Klieser-Walczak's independent status, the company is able to go from producing images for the most mainstream motion pictures to the most eclectic of theatrical experiments, and Monsters of Grace promises to be eclectic.

Kleiser, of the Kleiser-Walczak duo, told Computer Graphics World (June 1998) that "Bob [Wilson] says you should go to this opera as if going to a museum. It's not connected. You should just look at each vignette and listen to the music and see how you feel and how it affects your body. If you try to interconnect things, you will be confused."

What remains to be seen, however, is if this visual and musical montage succeeds in working as a whole or if the images remain disparate in a wash of aural ambiance.

Tappan King, the publicist for UAPresents, described Glass's musical score for Monsters of Grace as "edgy," which suggests that the ambition of the music itself may help string together the imagery.

The images, conceived by Wilson and executed in three dimensions, include a disembodied hand floating in space which is sliced neatly at the palm by a scalpel, a floating house which bobs leisurely through a tropical river with a family perched atop, a boy riding a bicycle at an impossibly slow speed, a raven attacking a helicopter flying over an oriental landscape. Notably, live shots of the boy who acted as the model for the bicycle scene are included in the film, though only in two dimensions.

Jedediah Wheeler, president of International Production Associates, said that "In Europe, Wilson is greater than a god," (L.A. Times , April 12, 1996). "In this country," he adds, "they hardly know him at all."

Monsters of Grace is truly a collaborative venture of incredible proportion as the artists at work are among the most renowned in their field. The tickets, ranging from $16 to $28, may seem a bit pricey, but ventures of this sort are hardly cheap to produce. What's more, UA students and staff receive an ample 20% off their tickets and they will take home their very own pair of stereoscopic specs, which are good for absolutely nothing other than watching Monsters of Grace, and looking ridiculously hip.