Self-assembling in van der Aa's multiverse: The Book of Sand

A young blonde woman climbs a staircase in a round, windowless room and emerges into a desert. She runs laps around a red cloth, singing "everything's repeated many times". Or: the same young woman lies in the same windowless round room, but now in a different dress and with a curious machine. "everything's repeated many times". Or: the same woman, same room, different dress, descends into an underground room in which she crawls under a table. The tablecloth resembles the red cloth in the desert. "everything's repeated many times". It is the opening of the interactive song cycle The Book of Sand By Michel van der Aa.

Michel van der Aa is a brave man. He wrote his song cycle based on stories by Jorge Luis Borges. One story by Borges is already difficult to capture in 12 minutes, let alone several stories, without completely losing the thread in his magically realistic world. Yet van der Aa manages to create a beautiful work in which you determine the course yourself, but in which the different layers constantly refer to each other.

Magic with 3 layers

Van der Aa is an interdisciplinary artist with a solid foundation in contemporary music but also with experience and training in film and theatre. The Book of Sand is a work at the limit of technical ability: 3 layers of film with music are available to the user to create their own collage. We asked at launch: more layers is not technically feasible. But in this case, more is also not better at all.

In those three layers, several stories by Jorge Luis Borges are fused into three songs in which a different music accompanies the same song for each layer. Kate Miller-Heidke sings the stars from heaven. The three film layers are very different in atmosphere, music, light, sound, action. They come together in the Aleph moment at the end of the cycle, the moment when everything in the entire universe converges in a self-reflecting mirror.

Pretentious, moi?

This sounds like it can be incredibly off-putting in pretentious art where the idea is more important than the execution. Nothing could be further from the truth. The three layers are beautifully crafted independently, both musically and cinematically. Navigation between the layers is very simple, you swipe or click and the layers merge seamlessly, at least, if your computer is not too old. So you can make your own film, depending on your taste you can edit incredibly fast and make a really fast music video, or you can slide between layers more quietly and make a dreamy surrealistic film. You can also navigate in time, piece forward, piece back. The only thing you can't do is bring the music from one layer to the film from another layer. That's a bit of a shame, because you can't 'test' the effect of your editing on the whole work.

The Book of Sand is a small and closed universe (perhaps multiverse is a better term here) in which it is a good place to be. It invites you to play and explore, clicking around and turning the clock. Gradually, you discover more about how the layers are structured relative to each other and how they influence each other. The result, however you navigate through it, is beautiful.

Good to know: The Book of Sand is here to view. The app will also be available soon.