Elevator Music 44: Joel Mellin—Imbrialis

Elevator Music 44: Joel Mellin—Imbrialis invites visitors to engage the poetics of a thunderstorm in an elevator. The thunderstorm is generated by Mellin’s custom computer code that calculates, organizes, and realizes the pitched raindrops of a storm. Each time the program performs the piece, a different version of the storm unfolds, which visitors will see as a scrolling score on a monitor. Visitors are also invited to toss a stone into a metal drum in the center of the elevator, creating a unique musical sequence that will join the sound of rain and thunder in the elevator. As melodies are created and then fade away, we are left to consider the scale of our actions, their impact on ourselves and others, and how we are changed by the storm. When the storm recedes, what’s left in our memory?

Imbrialis, meaning “of or relating to rain, rainy,” is presented in conjunction with the Skidmore Theater production of Eurydice, a play by Sarah Ruhl that reinterprets the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, from Eurydice’s perspective. Shuttled between Earth and the underworld by a rainy elevator—one whose Lethean water erases memory and language—the characters in Ruhl’s play grapple with love and loss, knowing and losing one’s self, and difficult, painful choices.