Negentropy: The Last Man in the Wasteland. Hugo Paquete, 2024
Negentropy: The Last Man in the Wasteland – A electronic opera by Hugo Paquete, 2024 Premiered at the Porto Planetarium – Centro Ciência Viva (June 21, 2024), Negentropy fuses generative music, AI, and environmental data to create a multisensory, post-apocalyptic experience. Real-time CO₂ sensor data shapes the evolving soundscape, turning the performance into a living, reactive system. Blending meta-music, improvisation, and post-techno aesthetics, the opera challenges the boundaries between performer, machine, and audience. Themes of collapse, human agency, and techno-existentialism are explored through immersive sound, visuals, and space. Created through Research through Art and Research through Design, Negentropy pushes opera into the future—where AI co-creation, gesture interfaces, and audience feedback reshape the meaning of live performance. Produced by Absonus Lab and supported by DGARTES and leading cultural institutions. Production Conditions: The production of Negentropy: The Last Man in the Wasteland was made possible with funding from the Direção-Geral das Artes (DGARTES) and the Portuguese Republic’s Ministry of Culture. The project was further supported by a network of institutional partners, including the Porto Planetarium – Centro Ciência Viva, Lisboa Incomum, Escola Superior Artística do Porto (ESAP), the University of Algarve, the Research Center for Arts and Communication (CIAC), Artech International, ACE: Teatro do Bolhão, LTK4: Center Court Festival, and the Mechanical Music Museum. Their collective backing played a key role in realizing this ambitious, interdisciplinary opera. More information https://absonuslab.org/home
