Adelic Penguins (1986)

Overview

Originally commissioned by the Sony Corporation of Japan and performed live on the JumboTRON, a fourteen-story TV set at the Expo in Tsukuba, Japan, Adelic Penguins is a collaboration between Fitzgerald, artist Paul Garrin, and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also appears as a performer). Structured in six segments, this technical tour-de-force is a pyrotechnic fusion of sound and image, in which the dynamic visual imagery fully complements and heightens Sakamoto's staccato, percussive score. Fitzgerald and Garrin merge terrestrial and interplanetary worlds, in which Sakamoto's figure becomes an integral part of the landscape. Set aloft in the surreal world of the artists' invention, Sakamoto dances, floats and walks through a hyperkinetic universe.