Beethoven’s Hair: Question and Answer with Xenophile’s Thomas Wallner

Toronto-based Xenophile Media recently won funding from the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund to produce Beethoven’s Hair. The project is creating a buzz in the industry, and Canadian NEW MEDIA recently corresponded with Xenophile partner Thomas Wallner to find out more about the production. Following is an edited version of Wallner’s responses. Candian NEW MEDIA: What is the project? Thomas Wallner: Beethoven’s Hair is an extraordinary music documentary produced by Rhombus Media that traces the unlikely journey of a lock of hair that was cut from Ludwig van Beethoven’s corpse and unravels the mystery of his life and death. This true story begins in modern times when a pair of Beethoven enthusiasts purchase a locket containing the hair at a Sotheby’s auction in London. From there the drama unfolds with forensic testing, unearthing the secret of Beethoven’s volatile nature and eventual demise – lead poisoning. Xenophile Media is creating an online web property and a DVD ROM to work in tandem with the TV broadcast of Beethoven’s Hair – the documentary and the best-selling book. A work of art in its own right, this convergent concept will be designed to deepen the viewer’s experience of the story while permitting them to learn and play with intriguing interactive features and content that are based in the world of Beethoven’s Hair. The convergent concept is intended to expand the audience’s understanding of the subject while strongly appealing to their emotions and the need to be entertained in a sophisticated manner. Beethoven’s Hair, therefore, marries a beautifully designed content rich web site with a highly sleek, sophisticated presentation with a fanciful ghost story and mystery designed by the internationally celebrated interactive designer Alex Mayhew. Utilizing a custom made flash based 3D engine as well as never-before-utilized 2D to 3D facial and mouth movement rendering software from the Max Planck Institute in Germany that will bring paintings to life. The experience is designed to take the player quite literally into Beethoven’s head. CNM: The project is based on a book, and will be bundled with a documentary film. When you read the book, what suggested itself to you first? A film or an interactive project? TW: I think to answer this question you need to look at the history of the project. It all started with the film. I was hired by Rhombus Media to write the script for the feature documentary. I had the book as a guide but the first thing I did was travel around the world to meet all the characters that are part of the Beethoven’s Hair story. I went to Denmark, Austria, Germany, the United States and talked to private collectors, forensic pathologists, historians, fishermen, musicologists, Beethoven fanatics, everyone who had something to do directly with the story. I realized very quickly that the whole breadth and depth of the project could not be captured in a sixty minute film. Look at the elements: you have Beethoven’s music, his biography, the characters that were involved in the journey of a relic that was derived from his body and the whole forensic angle that proved how Beethoven had lead poisoning at the time of his death. There was no way we could cram this into a 60-minute film. So, naturally it made sense to create an interactive piece of work that could do that and since the story unfolds over a period of 250 years with many interwoven thematic strands it made all the more sense, because I realized that we could create an interactive historical timeline that could be explored interactively by the user. But what really got Patrick (Crowe) and I excited about the work is that we would collaborate with Alex Mayhew on the project because we knew he would take it to a level where the project itself would become a work of art in its own right. We don’t believe that interactivity is about information or the presentation of information. We believe that it is about creating an engaging experience. I know that these phrases have been said very often and are almost tired or clichéed but when you look at Alex’s work that he’s done on Dreamer or Peter Gabriel’s Ceremony of Innocence you realize that you are dealing with a very unique talent who really creates some very unique and highly engaging as well as entertaining interactive work. I always like describing Alex’s work as stepping into a Dali painting. Of course, he might cringe at the notion, as his work actually isn’t as surreal but it does have this dreamlike quality that sucks you in and doesn’t let you go. I’ve seen nothing like it. We were very happy to convince Alex to work with us and it is a great honour to have an artist of his calibre collaborating with Xenophile. CNM: You’re working with both DVD and web. How do the different media demand different treatment? TW: The two different media actually do require a very different approach. The film is essentially linear, whereas the interactive component isn’t, although it will contain story segments or archs, especially in the haunted sections that are linear in a sense that you have control over your characters but that the segments are defined in terms of the journey that your characters undergoes. I’m a great believer in linear narrative, although that has been an anathema for years. I think in the early years there was this need to somehow prove that interactive narrative was superior to film narrative and so there was this need to discard anything that had to do with the "old" media. People were quite dogmatic about this and it reminded me a bit of a bunch of zealous communists who were out to topple the old system. I never really went for that. I think linear narrative and I mean that in the loosest is still an important part of story telling, even in an interactive story. I believe that the storytelling process doesn’t emanate from the medium we are dealing with but from the way our brains work and the way we are socially conditioned. We want to experience fictional narratives, not reality and we want to be swept away in to a story and not have to make choices and determine outcomes, that is not entertaining. Choice is not what it is all about. The choice to explore a story from all kind s of angles, choosing your path through it. It sounds very enticing and exciting, especially since we come from a culture in which choice and the freedom to choose is one of the highest ideals. But frankly, choice is laborious and there is not great pleasure in it. It is work and it is a left brain activity (the rational non intuitive part) and it is not very entertaining. Choice actually stresses people out. Story is about losing yourself and Alex creates these wonderful narratives that leave your rational mind at the door and he creates the illusion of total choice within a world that has very definite rules and linear paths. Again with linear I mean it in the most loose terms, as I don't want it misunderstood and I certainly don't want to peg Alex into one category or another. He's too much of an artist that way. So the film is a very classical documentary in which the subject speak for themselves and the interactive work we are doing at first seems like an extension of the film, in the sense that there is an in depth website that revolves around a 250 year timeline that can be explored quite freely. But then, we shatter expectations because it turns out that this website is "haunted" and things happen that are not really supposed to happen. This is where we take the concept into the unexpected and it becomes something completely different from what we expected. I love it when you tear down that wall that defined all your previous experiences and surprise people. People are not surprised by much anymore but with our interactive Beethoven's Hair experience we want to do just that. And I think for the project to be successful, we need to surprise people in order to get the word of mouth momentum going an I think that Alex will be able to pull it off. If anyone can pull it off then it is Alex. CNM: Which do you expect the audience to better react to? DVD? Web? I don't know if you can say that the audience will react better to one or the other. These are two different media, with different conventions and in comparing the two it is almost like the classic comparison, where people like to compare the film and a book that the film was based on. I always found that comparison nonsensical. A book isn't a film and film isn't a book. They operate on a totally different level, although they share a common story, common character, even common themes. But a filmmaker needs to take great license when adapting a book to suit it the film medium and in a way this is exactly the same thing when you approach a story through a film and interactively. You have to think very independently in each medium in order to harness its uniqueness and make it work. There is no other way to innovate. Too much convergent work is a lame repurposing of assets and information already available in the film. That makes no sense at all and doesn't serve anyone. I think it is important that for convergent concepts that each element the film and the interactive component have a very strong identity in their own right and that they support each other by driving audiences in both direction. I think in a way the Beethoven's Hair interactive component that Alex will create will be more "artistic" in a sense as we are giving him a lot of leeway to bring his sensibility to the project. The film will be a strong documentary with universal appeal that uses a conventional documentary format. It will excel in its craft and the production values that are above average, but the interactive component is really pushing some boundaries and doing something very unique. In this sense we expect more of a reaction to the interactive work than the film. CNM: What is the involvement of the different partners? CBC? Rhombus? Rhombus Media has been involved in the project from the very beginning. Larry Weinstein, the director of the film, was highly excited about the interactive project and the involvement of Alex Mayhew in the project. He has joked several times that he is slightly unsettled at the idea that the interactive part of the project will be so much more artistic than the film, but the truth is that Larry understands interactivity and has brought many wonderful ideas to the project. So Rhombus is a great collaborator on the project and it also means that we are able to bring together two artists who are the very top of their field and that doesn't happen very often. I think it is also very important to cite the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund as the major partner in the project. Without their support these projects simply would not happen. We meet interactive producers from around the world all the time and some of them are highly creative people and they do not have the kind of access to funds that we do. They get very jealous when they hear of the kind of work we are doing in Canada and how supportive organizations like the Bell Fund and Telefilm Canada are. Andra Sheffer and Charles Zamaria have been very excited and very supportive of this project. Getting these things off the ground is always a really long haul, no matter which way you slice it and having allies like Andra who believe in what you are doing and can see the value and the risk you are taking is a wonderful thing. The fact that they are willing to take the risk with you is something highly exceptional and cannot be praised enough. We haven't seen that kind of willingness to tread ground in the area of interactivity in private business and so it will be in the end bodies like the Bell Fund and Telefilm that drive innovation and creative excellence in this area. They are certainly living up to their mandates. CNM: Can you give me an idea of the genesis of the project? We saw Patrick pitching it at Charlottetown. What kind of work has gone into it at this point? What remains to be done? Actually it was Patrick and I who were pitching it together at Charlottetown. It certainly was a great moment when we won the Cyberpitch. There was such tough competition and winning was a great morale booster and it certainly must have had a positive effect on those who evaluated the project at the various funds. CNM: Sources have pointed this project out as worth special attention in the latest crop of Bell Fund winners. I've heard others talking with some excitement about it. What do you think is creating the buzz? I'll be frank and say I've got a been-there-done-that feeling about it. What's new? Are you pushing some envelopes? We will be integrating a new visual Morphable Face Modeling technology developed by the German researcher Volker Blanz of the Max Planck Institute that will permit us to create 3D images of Beethoven based on historical source paintings that will add a new level of uncanny realism to the interactive exploration. This will be used to render many of the classic images of Beethoven into a 3 dimensional reality and to add to the ghostly effect of the whole project. In some instances it will even allow us to make certain paintings talk!! Also, while I am at it, this project has other partners as well. In tandem Xenophile Media has raised about $50,000 in financing for the development phase of the interactive Beethoven’s Hair project. During development Xenophile Media has defined in detail the creative conception of the project, which includes detailed storyboards as well as a project plan for production, usability and technical specifications. An exciting part of the development phase was the creation of a working demo of the Parallax Engine. This is a proof of concept application with only limited functionality to test the potential of this methodology. Xenophile is submitting it with this application on a CD ROM, which also contains QuickTime movies of Volker Blanz’s 3D facial and mouth animation software. Xenophile has also secured valuable support, in-kind contributions, cash and license fees for the interactive project from ZDF and Danske Radio (who have committed to providing a interactive license fee), the Ira Brilliant Centre of Beethoven Studies in San Jose, the Bonn Beethoven House, Argonne Labs in Chicago, the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, The Max Planck Institute in Germany. For the interactive production, Xenophile Media has contacted and visited and secured the support of various archives and their affiliated consultants around the world—specifically the Beethoven House in Bonn, the world’s most important Beethoven institution where most of the rare documents and artifacts pertaining to Beethoven’s life are kept. During the development phase, I travelled to Germany, Austria, the United States, England and Denmark and Sweden and personally contacted and interviewed more than 30 pathologist, doctors, musicologists, forensic scientist, Beethoven biographers, and art dealers from around the world who will participate in the interactive component. CNM: One of the things that will clearly be important in the project is the music - can you talk to me about integrating that? How do you best treat a subject so intimately connected with the aural in a primarily visual medium like the web and DVD? Sound is vital to film, where it is taken granted to the point of being invisible. And sound is hugely overlooked in interactive work. I would disagree with the notion that the web and DVD's are primarily visual media. What they really are or should be is a unity of sound and picture that work together to create an experience that is visual and aural. Really a film or a good interactive project is the unity of both. If you look at Alex's work you can see that sound plays a hugely important role. He works with music and sound in a psychological way and Beethoven's Hair will be the same. After all we can make use of one of the greatest composers that ever lived for this project, but we intend to go beyond just pedantically using Beethoven's music as a "soundtrack". As we are trying to take the audience into Beethoven's Head we intend to treat sound in a highly subjective manner. We want to rip apart some of his themes, deconstruct some of his music and face the audience with fragments of themes that become the great building blocks of works we are all familiar with. Of course only a skilled composer can do that and we are currently talking to Alexina Louie, who is Canada's most performed Composer about doing just that for us and weaving in new music that deconstructs Beethoven and supports the emotion in the interactive narrative. We are very excited about working with her, especially since she brings some real interactive experience to the project. She composed the music for Toothpaste and Burnt Toast, both convergent opera pieces. She is extremely creative and Alex is highly excited about the prospect of working with her. We are currently going to Telefilm for funding and this will determine whether or not we can engage Alexina in the way would like to.

Beethoven’s Hair: Question and Answer with Xenophile’s Thomas Wallner

Broadcast | July 23, 2004

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