Black Fell
an interactive digital opera
by Martin Suckling and Frances Leviston
“The white dome of Palomar
turns in the desert.
I squat in ragged forest
in Baba Yaga’s hut —
my shut shell of hazlenut”
An astronomer returns to the observatory at Kielder, where as a child she accompanied her father as he tended to his beloved reflector.
Tonight the forest has drawn in the clouds, thick and settled: there is no prospect of worthwhile observation.
But the darkness suits her.
Starless, she turns her gaze inward, searching among ghostly errors of measurement for the echoes of landmarks lost at the dim boundary, where knowledge fades, and fades rapidly – but still we search, and listen, and strive to understand.
