Tsunami over Germany

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Production data
Original title: Tsunami over Germany
Author: Heiner Grenzland
Length: 54:36 minutes
Genre: Original radio play
Genus: Real satire / science fiction
Producer: RBB ( Broadcasting Berlin-Brandenburg )
Year of production: 2007
Country of production: Germany
Production language: German
Premiere: January 18, 2008, audio stage in the Volksbühne Berlin
First broadcast: January 27, 2008, cultural radio
team
Director: Heiner Grenzland
Assistant director: Teresa Schomburg
Production assistant: Katharina Matz
Casting / Production: Jutta Schnirch
Sound & technology: Peter Avar, Wenke Decker
Editorial staff: Regine Ahrem
occupation
Sabine Porn, moderator: Sabine Porn
Raiko Thal, moderator: Raiko Thal
Ullizell, outside reporter: Ulli cell
News anchor: Nadya Luer
News reporter: Andreas Thieck
Lisa Tanngrebner, radio intern: Britta Steffenhagen
Konrad Schüssl, ORF reporter: Anton Rattinger
Tilmann Öhlen, capital correspondent: Gerd Grasse
Radio reporter: Ari Gosch
Voice in the bunker: Uta Hallant
Voice in the bunker Michael redhead
Prof. Weilheim,
Max Planck Institute:		 Uwe Müller
Prof. Pannhaus, environmental acoustician at
the University of Bochum:		 Friedhelm Ptok
Dr. Peter Schütt, Sonic Weapons Expert: Fritz Letsch
Daniel Dreßler, reporter: Daniel Dreßler
DJ Leviathan: DJ Leviathan, Nerodom
with Stefan Kaminski (voice imitator) in various roles, as well as Christian Ehrich , Joachim Kaps , Judith Strösenreuter , Ursula Nisser , Jürgen Pittak , Eva Schmidt, the upper level choir of the Herder-Gymnasium Berlin a. v. a.

Tsunami over Germany is a radio play by the author and director Heiner Grenzland. It was produced in 2007 by rbb Kulturradio (Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg) as an homage to The War of the Worlds by HG Wells and premiered on January 18, 2008 at the Volksbühne Berlin's audio stage . The first broadcast by Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg took place in the Sunday afternoon program on January 27, 2008.

Subject, form and content

The subject and theme of the radio play is the media coverage of a puzzling storm cloud that draws a path of destruction through Germany (route) and turns out to be an acoustic tsunami, i. H. as a deadly, all-destructive extreme high-pressure sound wave, created by the noise emissions from cars, airplanes and industrial plants.

The reporting on this new environmental phenomenon takes place in the form of a radio broadcast interspersed with news blocks and reports from the events. As the situation worsens, reporting will be moved to the specially set up “ARD Crisis Reporting Center” in Berlin, from which information will be provided around the clock and nationwide with live broadcasts on the events on site, comments, background information and expert opinions . The discovery of the acoustic tsunami is a sensation that is gripping everyone like a fever and is being used by a wide variety of groups as a top media topic. Although politicians recognize the seriousness of the threat situation and take measures up to and including the deployment of the German armed forces, the final catastrophe cannot be stopped and the acoustic worst-case scenario ensues .

Analogies between "The War of the Worlds" and "Tsunami over Germany"

The reference to the probably most famous radio play of all time, The War of the Worlds , is complex and goes beyond that of a mere homage. The author says: “I put this beautiful old model (meaning The War of the Worlds ) in my workshop, exchanged the driver and occupants, brought the engine and chassis up to date, sprayed them with top paint and then placed on a freshly paved road with my destination coordinates in the sat nav. Voilà! The tsunami over Germany! "

Conceptually and with regard to the dramaturgical course, The War of the Worlds and Tsunami over Germany are very similar. The media scientist Michèl Gehrke worked out the analogies in his master's thesis. In both radio plays, a fictitious catastrophe scenario is presented as a real event and presented in the form of media reporting with all the seriousness and authority of the radio medium (in the case of the radio play Tsunami over Germany , the radio program shown is initially itself a radio play program, i.e. a radio play within a radio play) . In Tsunami over Germany , the realistic effect is reinforced by the fact that the radio speakers are real television and radio presenters known to the public, such as B. Raiko Thal , Ulli cell or Sabine Porn u. a. In addition, the acoustic tsunami is being introduced as a “new type of environmental phenomenon”, which means that it appears in the current climate debate and gains a certain degree of credibility.

The uncanny and puzzling as a key element

The essential and crucial conceptual moment for the functioning of the dramaturgy and psychological effect is that it is essentially about an enigmatic, alien and incomprehensible threat: an uncanny power that ultimately threatens to wipe out all of humanity and even through the use of the Military cannot be stopped. (In The War of the Worlds , these are Martians, in Tsunami over Germany it is an acoustic tsunami.) The coverage of such a phenomenal subject is hardly verifiable, the listener could only verify the truth of the news with great effort and therefore has to rely on the The seriousness and credibility of the reporter and the eye and ear witnesses presented are abandoned - he is downright exposed to the reporting and is overwhelmed by the emotionally charged treatment. "Here lies the problem for the truth - and the chance for the lie." (Heiner Grenzland)

The media truth mechanism

Although an acoustic tsunami (like the Martians) is pure fiction, the realistically staged reporting turns it into a "truth", at least a media one. At the same time, however, this truth is "unrealized" again because the reporting, which is geared towards sensation and audience rating, transforms the action into a spectacle, a media event. The media-critical focus of Tsunami over Germany is on this transformation of a real threat into a spectacular media event - a mechanism that is symptomatic of the media age. Both The War of the Worlds and the tsunami over Germany are set in the gray area between reality and fiction, between authentic news and fake news and demonstrate, like an extremely unlikely event, a pure assertion, through a sophisticated media processing (almost) to a "truth " can be. This reflects the media sensitivity of a particular section of contemporary history. In this regard, Tsunami over Germany can be seen as a lesson from the digital media age .

Differences in content and intention

While The War of the Worlds finally comes up with the rescue in the form of a bacterium (nature as deus ex machina ), the acoustic environmental catastrophe ends in tsunami over Germany with total destruction. The War of the Worlds was conceived as a modern fairy tale (the book on which it is based also as a political satire on the colonial politics of the British Empire) and is now seen less as a fake report that is critical of the media and more as a classic science fiction story. Tsunami over Germany, on the other hand, relies fully on the reality effect and focuses specifically and critically on the mechanisms in media operations and the topic of environmental protection. The author and director: “... in addition to fine dust and NOx, the dramatic increase in noise emissions caused by car traffic, aircraft and industrial plants also threaten our environment and health. To put it bluntly: Noise is the new CO2! "(Heiner Grenzland)

Credibility - A mix of fake news and authentic facts

In Tsunami over Germany , the fake news spread there is embedded in the flow of a professionally designed radio broadcast that is familiar to the audience. Every program today could run like this, from the news to the talk show : It is the pattern according to which media structures function at all. One event or topic chases the next, the dramaturgical arc runs increasingly short of breath, the content becomes more and more wacky, just to keep the tension, i.e. the audience rating. Based on these well-known processes alone, the listener does not initially “suspect”. In addition, the (alleged) acoustic tsunami is embedded in the large, current and strongly emotionally charged context of climate and environmental protection issues. The banal fact that noise emissions are just as invisible as nitrogen oxides and can be dangerous in extreme accumulation and density suddenly becomes an important credibility factor.

Examples

All live reports, comments, expert analyzes, news and eyewitness reports in Tsunami over Germany always contain a share of truth, facts, well-known and conventional things. This mixture makes it difficult for the listener to recognize what is currently a fake or what is real. For example, if

  • from the “ARD Center in Berlin” to Munich for the “ Think twice ” technology forum , a “counter-event to the Munich Security Conference”, at which a “sound weapons expert” lectures on the “UN sound weapons convention”. The Munich Security Conference is there, the UN and UN conventions also, even counter-events for Munich Security Conference are common; only the expert is not genuine and the text of the alleged Sonic Weapons Convention, although it again mixes historical facts with fictitious claims.
  • the Max Planck Institute in Berlin announced the sensation to the press that "with the acoustic plasma in the core of the climate cloud in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a scientific discovery has been made that has not occurred in 100 years". Here, too, in the lecture of the alleged professor, physical expertise is mixed together with a freely invented object, which results in a somehow credible whole against the background of the feverish sensation fueled by the media.
  • A real DJ in a real club in Munich claims that deadly frequencies secretly recorded in the underground scene from the acoustic tsunami would be mixed into music tracks and a new trend would just emerge in the club scene - or if a journalist in the ARD studio inspires tells that an exhibition has been announced at the “Düsseldorfer Kunstverein” , in which the artists also referred to the ubiquitous media phenomenon of the acoustic tsunami in their work. Even in these weird scenes there is a certain credibility, not least because of the "widespread view that the world of art and culture knows no borders with regard to craziness." (Heiner Grenzland)
  • the radio reports that rallies are taking place in Berlin. E.g. Claudia Roth leads a silent demonstration in Kreuzberg or Oskar Lafontaine in Marzahn calls on the federal government at a rally of the Left Party to “finally introduce the polluter pays principle in German environmental policy and the permanent exceeding of the emission limits set in the noise protection ordinances by large corporations is no longer a peculiar offense to treat ”- or when Klaus Wowereit (original voice A) in a“ speech broadcast live from the Red City Hall ”encourages Berliners in the face of the catastrophe.

According to the immanent logic (see above), towards the end of the tsunami over Germany, the events become more and more dramatic and shrill. The development is taken to extremes when the reporter Ullizell describes live, with a voice trembling with emotional touch, how a huge “wave of people” opposes the acoustic tsunami at the gates of Berlin, singing Beethoven's “Ode to Joy” from the Ninth Symphony and with bare chests to demonstrate their "peaceful intention." Here the fake news goes to the limit of the surreal and a subliminal satirical, sometimes almost cynical dimension can be felt in the representations. Nevertheless, the listener's perception and classification conventions are still fully addressed and at the same time again duped across the board.

criticism

irritations

The media form of the perfect simulation of reality also arouses criticism, especially when, as is the case in the tsunami over Germany , threatening content is conveyed that has undesired effects such as B. Can trigger panic reactions - regardless of whether in a large crowd or just a few individuals. Similar to The War of the Worlds in 1938, the initial broadcast of the tsunami over Germany in 2008 caused great irritation among the listeners. In addition to the reality factors already mentioned above, at the same time as the broadcast a violent storm hit the areas described in the broadcast as the “crisis region”, which particularly unsettled drivers (listening to the news). There have been numerous complaints and even threats of litigation at the station. The author insisted on the "necessity of using drastic means to point out a new environmental problem", but later, as in the directors cut, he re-framed the radio play in a revised version and made it more clearly recognizable as fiction.

Lesson for media literacy

Tsunami over Germany is not a modern fairy tale, in which the irritations caused caused the creators to be extremely surprised, as is said to have been the case with The War of the Worlds . "That was a shock for us ... The invasion of Mars monsters was just a fairy tale for us" (Orson Welles). The "tsunami over Germany" can be understood as a kind of media provocation in which all effects are planned and preprogrammed in order to show reality-distorting media mechanisms and the resulting gray area between fiction and reality and thus to set an educational impulse in times of fake news .

“Today, almost every lie can be presented in the media as an authentic fact as long as it - in sibylline terms - is attached to some kind of truth. The credibility of facts can only be found out by analyzing their 'DNA' ... through media competence that needs to be learned and trained ”(Heiner Grenzland).

Reality reference

Since industrialization , exposure to noise and noise emissions has increased continuously, especially in large cities. In this respect, the tsunami over Germany has a realistic background. The environmental and health-damaging effects of noise and high noise emissions have been medically recognized and proven and this manifests itself politically in the Federal Immission Control Act and in numerous noise protection ordinances that have now been passed at federal and state level. Since the 1960s, noise has also been a topic of discussion in the press as a factor that is harmful to the environment and health. Many initiatives, organizations and action groups try to inform the population about this problem. One of the earliest and most well-known warners of excessive noise emissions is the bacteriologist and Nobel Prize winner Robert Koch , who prophesied in a lecture in Vienna in 1910: "One day people will have to fight noise just as relentlessly as cholera and plague ."

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Volksbühne Berlin
  2. ↑ Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg (rbb Kulturradio)
  3. ↑ The high-pressure sound wave arises on Usedom and from there travels across northeast Germany in a straight line towards Berlin and probably down to Munich. On its way it becomes bigger and more dangerous until all its destructive power is discharged in an acoustic GAU .
  4. ↑ A fiction and invention of the author
  5. ↑ a b c d Recorded conversation for Nordwestradio May 23, 2008 in Munich, broadcast Radio Bremen May 30, 2008
  6. ↑ "Incredible as it may seem ..." The game with the listener, University of Essen 2010
  7. ↑ Prolog directors cut 2017
  8. ↑ Sonic weapons lecture
  9. ↑ Club Nerodom
  10. ↑ In a prologue, two survivors describe what the world looks like after the acoustic meltdown: People live in an underground bunker system in which any non-vital sound generation is prohibited so that acoustic high pressure waves can never arise again. However, there is a sound emission paper trade that makes it possible to organize a loud basement party with music. Otherwise communication is only whispered. It looks bleak on the surface of the earth. Germany has been destroyed, a single barren landscape of rubble over which, like screeching firestorms, tens of thousands of acoustic tsunamis chase! With the preceding dialogue, the listener is beamed into a distant future, from which he then learns by means of a flashback to a time before how the first acoustic tsunami was discovered and the great catastrophe (the complete destruction of Germany). (See author's website )
  11. ↑ Deutschlandfunk
  12. ↑ Sixth part of the Federal Immission Control Act: Noise Reduction Planning
  13. ↑ LImSChG Berlin
  14. ^ SPIEGEL 1968 , FAZ 2010
  15. ↑ noise league Switzerland [1] , Noise Awareness Day
  16. ↑ Well-known and widely spread quote in the media. Source?