HOMO DEUS - Slave to the Rhythm of Medicine

There’s a certain feeling everybody shares: there are things we can find amazing, things for which we feel immensely grateful, but things with which we personally wish to have as little to do as possible: a PET-Scan, an ONCOR linear accelerator, a single-photon emission tomography scan, and even a simple dentist’s drill. None of these devices are silent – some even sending acoustic signals that evoke alarm bells when irregularities are detected. From the metallic and deafening noise of an MRT to the light hum of an infusion pump, we can’t help but listen and wonder what may become of us – existing between fear and the hope of being relieved, healed or even saved. Hearing the “soundtrack” of medical machinery leaves us feeling everything from uninterested to helplessly exposed and reliant.
It was such thinking that inspired me to record and render these sounds, later mixing them with music and thus bringing this soundtrack of the “Rhythm of Medicine” to life.
With the help and endeavours of an exceptional team of choreographers, real-time computer animation specialists, in addition to an excellent dancer and a video artist, this musical endeavour was then complemented by an accompanying visual spectacle in the form of a video exploring the feelings and effects these automated forms of progress in medicine can inspire – both exhilarating and disturbing.
Yuval Harari has described the evolutionary history of humans: from homo erectus to homo sapiens and to what may well be the next step: a human being who tries to navigate and manipulate the borders of their own mortality – including the price that we may have to pay for it.
Based on these ideas, I called the video “HOMO DEUS”, which tells the story of a person from their birth, the fights in which they’ll be involved, throughout the pains and desperation they´ll have to suffer, the hopes they’ll entertain and abandon, the dreams they’ll fulfil and see shattered, and, finally, the peace they find. Whether this peace ends in death or survival is a matter of interpretation.