Tirtha: An Architectural Opera is a cross-disciplinary, collaborative effort to present architecture as a multimedia experience. Conceived by The Office of Uncertainty Research, the project imagines a site-specific "Recomposting Center" — a burial place where human bodies are composted — through music, video, concept art, and architectural design.

Tirtha ran as part of the TIME SPACE EXISTENCE exhibition, from May 22nd - Nov 21th, 2021 at the Palazzo Bembo in Venice Italy.

The Opera is presented virtually as a ~35 minute video made up of 12 acts. I wrote the music, which is also available in album format.

Watch the opera in its entirety or stream the album below. It's also available on streaming services.

"The operatic tradition, in the West, thrills in presenting and re-presenting, the well-worn drama, with exaggerated auditory and visual delight. With Tirtha, OUR aspires to present architecture with the same auditory and visual delight, thereby inaugurating a new tradition for architectural representation. By adding narrative, music and spectacle to it, Tirtha seeks to transform the dull architectural custom of the ‘rendering’ and the ‘fly-through’ into a performance art.

"Architecture, in itself, in its forms, structure, orders and progressions, has narrative and theatre already deeply embedded in it. This is well known within the discipline. The objective of architectural opera is to bring the drama of architecture into the public realm in the form of a performing art.

"Unlike cinema or theatre, that focuses on the run and nuance of narrative sequence, opera delights in the spectacle of emotion and scenography. Operating in the same registers, an architectural opera seeks to greatly embellish narrative to embellish and make shine the drama and beauty of architecture."