Sphere factor

Kid Koala expands his new musical picture book Space Cadet into a mellow multimedia moonwalk

American theoretical physicist Alan H. Guth, originator of cosmological inflationary theory, proposed the mind-bending notion of the “pocket universe.” For the universe that Eric San, aka Kid Koala—turntable titan, clever composer and fountain of fun stuff—has built around his new wordless picture book-with-soundtrack Space Cadet, that’s too little room. Not by much, though.

“All of that fits in an Econoline van,” San says proudly, flipping through his iPad’s pix of the Space Cadet Headphone Tour’s debut at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art last December. An impressive remark, given the “quiet, fun-for-the-family” show’s many moving parts: a multitude of modular screens, suspended planets, musical gear, anachro­nistic devices and phantasmagoric artworks, yours to discover when it touches down at the Biosphere this weekend.

The themes of the book itself, San explains, are family, isolation and connectivity. “It’s about a guardian robot and a girl he raises to be a great astrophysicist-slash-space explorer. It takes place in the present and in flashbacks, so you piece together the bond that they have. They live parallel isolated lives—he’s left back on Earth while she’s up on some planet somewhere, float­ing in her one-person space pod.”

Much of the music was composed soon after his daughter Maple’s birth in 2008. With her often cradled in his left arm, San capitalized on “that Montreal winter quiet-time thing,” giving the tunes “a very lullaby feel”—a calming counterpoint to the hesher-rock hellride of the Slew, his collab with Wolfmother’s rhythm section around that time (news on that: album two is cookin’!).

KVETCHING ABOUT ETCHING

The artwork of Space Cadet, San’s second such audio-enhanced graphic novella, following 2003’s Nufonia Must Fall, was laboriously crafted over four years. Rather than working with pen and ink, he elected to use the painstaking etchboard process.

“Some of the pages took close to 30 hours. Some, the ones in space, took five minutes. That’s the big joke of it all—‘I’m gonna do it in space! I’ll have this book done in a month!’ And then I get to my first indoor scene and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is gonna be madness.’”

Asked if he ever wanted to abandon the etchboard’s excruciating demands, he points at a particularly dense crowd-scene double-spread and says flatly, “Yes, these pages.”

Asked when he expects to again employ this technique he has now mastered, San pinpoints the precise time as an emphatic “never!”

Digital slides of those images are just the start of the live show’s visual dimension, handled by Travis Flint of Bilbao, Spain. “He’s a real-time light painter,” San explains, noting how Flint’s array of tricks and techniques allows for the collaborative, interpretational and improvisational. Other big words for today: immersive (the Biosphere’s 360-degree set-up sees to that) and interactive—audience participation is encouraged!

But audiences must first surrender to the comfort of the inflatable “space pods” wired for headphones, through which most of the concert’s music is transmitted. “Because the music was written almost as lullabies,” says San, “the layers are really nuanced and subtle. I’d heard of people doing silent discos, so I thought of providing an environment that fit the theme of isolation, but was still a communal experience.”

HOME SWEET DOME

Serving as an airlock between the real world and the one San and co. have concocted inside the Biosphere is a pre-show gallery area featuring a listening library of San’s favourite space­themed record (“stuff to get in the zone”), an array of space plant sculptures c/o Luisa Schabas and San’s wife, Corinne Merrell, the Music Spaceship Console (“so people can add their own sounds to the environment”), a set by NYC’s Terence Bernardo (whose next album San produced), original artwork and a cassette jukebox of tunes from the book, and a customizable gingerbread Space Cookie stand (“You know me—it’s not a show without snacks!”).

Apparently there’s also an Asteroids videogame, tampered with so as to use the faces of attendees, photographed on arrival. “You pretty much have to shoot everybody else in the head,” San giggles.

On top of all that, how awesome is it that the show’s presenter, the Osheaga festival—an award-winner for eco-consciousness—got the (ahem) “green light” to put it on at the Biosphere envi­ronmental museum, nestled inside the geodesic dome the visionary R. Buckminster Fuller designed for the American pavilion at Expo 67?

“That is too awesome,” San says solemnly. ■

AT BIOSPHERE (160 CHEMIN TOUR-DE-L’ISLE, ÎLE STE-HÉLÈNE) ON FRIDAY, JULY 15, 6 P.M., SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, JULY 16–17, 2 P.M. AND 5 P.M., $32, ALL AGES

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