The Meta Simulacrum

A World Premiere Collaborative Film by William Brittelle

This 90-minute film, designed by Grammy-winning producer and composer William Brittelle, debuted May 2, 2021 featuring members of Metropolis Ensemble, and served as an introduction to Eternal September, an alternative digital multimedia project interwoven with music, text, animation, and film.

Commissioned by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, co-presented by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, The Great Northern, and The Walker Art Center in association with Liquid Music. Metropolis Ensemble is a founding partner of The Meta Simulacrum.

About the Project

The Meta Simulacrum is an elegy for a lost future and a de-facto embrace of the strange, surreal times ahead. Using the symbology of our shared past to look forward into an uncertain future of climate change, machine sentience, and the ever-expanding cyber universe, this extraordinary collective debuts the first material generated through The Meta Simulacrum.

This unique project draws from modern classical, jazz, neo-soul, vaporwave, and experimental rock worlds with recontextualized elements of ’80s sound. The film’s retro-futuristic musical landscape are supercharged by the visionary work of filmmaker Isaac Gale and editor / programmer Patrick Marschke.

The content was developed collectively with musicians from the Metropolis Ensemble network alongside guest artists, including members of Roomful of Teeth, Wye Oak, Son Lux, and an array of multimedia artists and creative technologists.

The film is part of Eternal September, an ever-expanding alternate digital reality within a discrete wiki system unconnected from the World Wide Web. Conceived and created in the dark days of the pandemic by composer / producer William Brittelle, Eternal September is a collaborative large-scale multimedia project exploring “internet" as medium.