Furioser and Spurioser, or the Unforeseen Consequences of the Democratization of Knowledge

Polaris choir is a high-intensity community choir led by conductor Jack Bennet and social dialogue coordinators Sanford Hare and Emma Norton. Polaris is a member of Choirs for Change Association, a registered non-profit organization based in Halifax that strives to support social change movements through innovative choral events.

In their inaugural Nocturne appearance, Polaris will be performing Jason Noble’s new contemporary choral work: Furioser and Spusioser, or the Unforeseen Consequences of the Democratization of Knowledge. As Noble writes:

“The amount of time I have wasted online is staggering... and this wasted time has not usually availed of the best that the Internet has to offer, but has largely consisted of endless scrolling through social media, with all the anxiety, petty jealousy, and furious, spurious encounters that this brings. I felt that if I did not channel these experiences into something creative, the time would truly have been wasted. We as a society are just beginning to come to grips with the negative consequences of the Internet—the bullying, the alienation, the fragmentation of thought—which are the ‘unforeseen consequences of the democratization of knowledge.’ For the first time, a whole generation, the so-called ‘digital natives,’ has always lived with the Internet, acclimatizing to reality and to this bizarre para-reality at the same time. It put me in mind of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, in which Alice, a young child, finds herself dropped into a dreamland that is both seductive and hostile and in which nonsense reigns above reason. And the more I thought through it, the more I realized that specific events, characters, and phrases from Alice in Wonderland map with uncanny accuracy onto the curiouser and curiouser situation we now find ourselves in. [This project] expresses this in a choral story that combines narration with a surreal musical environment. The piece uses traditional choral singing relatively sparingly, and employs many extended vocal techniques. These are never random sound effects or ‘weird for the sake of weird,’ but are always chosen with deliberate narrative and musical intent. They must be delivered with conviction to bring the story to life, as it moves through moments of humour, madness, and some very dark places.”