::: Honorary Mention Prix Ars Electronica 2007:::

24 May 2007: Jorge Isaac and Roderik de Man received a Honorary Mention for the work MARIONETTE (blockflutes & live electronics) during the "Prix Ars Electronica 2007" in Austria. The mention was given in the category Digital Musics.

The Ars Electronica is a world famous festival for the experimental arts and technology of the digital age. It is a meeting-point for international artists who are concerned with the new possibilities for combining electronic technologies with the arts.

More info: Prix Ars Electronica 2007

::: In the top-10 best compositions 2007:::

21 May 2008: MARIONETTE was selected in the top ten of most distinctive new Dutch music composed in 2007, out of an exhaustive selection process with 97 entries. 

Toonzetters is a new event organized by Buma Cultuur, Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ and Music Centre the Netherlands.

More info: Toonzetters 2008

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Inspiration Source

In "Über das Marionetten Theater" (On the Puppet Theater, 1810) Heinrich von Kleist, through his protagonist Herr C., discourses on the infinite grace of inanimate objects. The Puppet Theater was not written for marionettes to play, but as a description of their function and value. He compares the capacities of live performers and marionettes according to romantic aesthetics. 

Kleist explains that objects, unlike people, need not behave affectedly. He says the marionette, unfettered by the need to touch the ground (since it's strumming to the tune of strings pulled from the top), is far more graceful than the human dancer. Only a god or possibly an animal such as a bear, Herr C. proclaims, could equal the grace of inanimate matter, whereas humans are clumsy, weighed down by consciousness. In his argumentation for the superiority of the marionette Kleist shows a belief in the cognitive and creative superiority of the unconscious over the conscious, of spontaneity and intuition over reason. 

Kleist’s enthusiasm for the marionette theatre was shared by many yet the weight of his words and the endless possibilities he saw in the puppet world were not be recognized until long after his death, adding justification to the notion that Kleist was a man born before his time.