Truth.io

Truth.io is an independent platform for crossmedia art projects.

selection of projects we’ve helped create:

the bird of a thousand voices

The Bird of a Thousand Voices is an extraordinary music theater production that blends Armenian folklore with contemporary music and immersive visual art. Led by renowned pianist and composer Tigran Hamasyan and visionary director Ruben Van Leer, this performance reimagines the ancient Armenian myth of the Bird of a Thousand Voices—a mystical bird whose song brings harmony to the world. The piece explores the power of maternal storytellings and the timeless stories that shape our cultures. Featuring ethereal vocals and performance by Areni Agbabian, a kinetic light installation known as the Wing Machine by Boris Acket, and a bilingual Armenian-English libretto by Florian Hellwig, this transmedia experience merges newly composed music with improvised moments to create a poetic journey of self-discovery. Through mesmerising visuals, dynamic light design, and a profound narrative, the performance delves into themes of renewal, resilience, and the search for unity in a fractured world. The Bird of a Thousand Voices promises a captivating and immersive experience for all who seek the transformative power of art and myth.

SOUND OF LIGHT

Sound of Light (SOL) is an immersive, multidisciplinary journey that transcends the boundaries of live performance and visual art. Created by Grammy-nominated saxophonist Ben Wendel, visionary director Ruben Van Leer and an acclaimed artist collective, this groundbreaking work weaves together music, dance, and innovative visual technology to explore the profound connections between the human body, nature, memory, and trauma. Over 80 enchanting minutes, Wendel’s saxophone improvisations engage in a dynamic, real-time dialogue with the movements of dancer Alice Godfrey, while light and sound evolve fluidly in response. The audience is enveloped in a living, breathing environment where art and technology converge to evoke both the fragility and power of human experience.

Media: about video | project page

Awards: selected for the Golden Prague awards 2024 ‘Performance Arts’

SACRED ENVIRONMENT

Sacred Environment is a ground-breaking work by the Dutch-Australian composer Kate Moore and visual artist Ruben Van Leer, commissioned by the Holland Festival and NTR Radio that got a large scale premiere at The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Winning an Audience Award at the Holland Festival 2017. Soprano Alex Oomens goes on a virtual reality dream-track towards the Hunter Valley in Australia, originally the territory of the Dharug, Darkinjung and Wonnarua people. The audience will follow her on a big screen in search of the stoneless temple. In this piece, the changing meaning of sacred ground in our demythologised society is being explored.

Media: 360-video excerpt

Press: VICE | Volkskrant | NRC Next | Trouw | Resonate

SYMMETRY

Symmetry is a dance-opera film shot inside CERN, the largest experimental particle physics facility in the world. With the cathedral-like majesty of the Large Hadron Collider as his theatre, a modern physicist searches for the smallest primordial particle and discovers a love without end. Symmetry Unravelled is the accompanying documentary about the collision of art and science in the world’s largest machine at CERN. Complementing the dance-opera film, a common curiosity at the crux of man’s fascination with the unknown is revealed. This special interdisciplinary project was the first Truth.io Foundation produced, earning 11 international awards, broadcasted in 3 continents, reaching 2 million+ audience and streamed in 8 languages on AppleTV and Amazon Prime.

Media: AppleTV | trailer | project blog | landscape scene | digital reel

Press: HuffPost | Hyperallergic | VICE | Volkskrant | Trouw

YOU DON’T KNOW OPERA

Dutch National Opera tenor Frank Engel plays the lead in this short film, based on his background also as a boxer. What is real and what’s not? The opera Peter Grimes is about an individual under attack from the collective. He needs to stand up for himself, as does Frank in this film, who is battling himself to overcome his fear performing on stage. Featuring a poem written and voiced by legendary street poet Johnny BANG Reilly and an interdisciplinary cast of stage and cinematic talent.

Media: campaign cut | longer format

Partners: Dutch National Opera | Anomaly | New Ams Film Company

Press: NOWNESS | The Drum

Disappearance

Disappearance is an ode to the temporality of phenomena. Much of what we considered to be normal, we lost through corona. It wasn’t just about our health, also the power and fragility of values such as intuition, naivety, urgency and open-mindedness were at stake. But that too has an end. We realize that when something appears, it will also disappear. And then something new will appear again, albeit perhaps in a different form or guise. In this fascinating performance with12 dancers, music, projections, light and children’s voices come together in the ether. In an interspace where everything disappears and appears, where bodies long for a voice and voices yearn for a body. The production is a sensory experience that starts in the dark and, through blue - red - yellow, ends in the light, in open-mindedness and hope.

Media: trailer | Appearance | Non Solo Medea

Artists: Emio Greco Pieter C. Scholten | ICK Ensemble | Floriaan Ganzevoort | Ruben Van Leer

Partners: Ballet National De Marseille | ICK Amsterdam | ITA | Yfx-lab

Press: Volkskrant | Trouw | RTL Today | Contacto | La Glaneuse

POWER OF WATER

Live interval act Power Of Water was broadcasted to over 180 million people world wide during the 65th Eurovision Song Contest. Film and on-stage merge starring singer Davina Michelle and actress Thekla Reuten showing a water spectacle where nature, humanity & technology are confronted. Shot on location of The Delta Works, protecting Holland from the rising sea level for more than half a century. The Dutch have managed to tame the coast of the North Sea to date. But in addition to the high-tech Delta more is needed to stay resilient. The climate crisis forces us to come into contact with our own nature… We are made of water. Water is the universal element that connects all elements and people on Earth. With this associative cinematic stage performance resilience is celebrated in the broadest sense and our energetic connection with water!

Media: mini-film | live broadcast | digital reel

Press: TV interviews | Brabants Dagblad | Volkskrant | AD

I know…

‘Fragmented times’ is how choreographer Bill T. Jones describes the period we’re living in. In times of ‘social distancing’ he invites people to record a mobile video about something they know deep down and feel strongly about - expressed in words and gestures. The project searches for a concept of ‘we’ in an online digital ritual activated during the Holland Festival as a social media performance. Within 3 weeks the online participation reached a diverse audience of more then 40.000 people and 125 unique uploads, with media support by partner WeTransfer.

Partners: Holland Festival | Park Avenue Armory | WeTransfer

Press: Glamcult | Theaterkrant | 200%mag | Radio1

NON SOLO MEDEA

Dance opera Non Solo Medea was performed live in the oldest theater still active in Europe: ‘Teatro Grande’ part of Pompeii ruins in Italy. The piece reveals the modernity of Greek tragedies in a filmic scenography and strongly questions the notion of determinism in a society in crisis. Making itself the bearer in a cathartic impulse of a desire for change. Actress Manuela Mandracchia incarnates from time to time different characters of the Greek theater, monologues extracted from works such as Antigone (Sophocles), Oedipus Rex (Sophocles) and Medea (Euripides). The intense dialogue that is created on the scene between the dancers, the actress and the percussionist increases the dramatic tension in which love and struggle are united in this creation. The past and the present touch and collide on an energetic and powerful musical background, drawing both on the Pink Floyd repertoire and on some of the Beethoven and Mahler symphonies.

Media: trailer

Partners: Ballet National De Marseille | ICK Amsterdam | Teatro Stabile di Napoli

Press: La Tribune | La Provence | GB OPERA | Compadidanza | Oltrecultura

THE BOOK OF SAND

With The Book of Sand composer Michel van der Aa has invented a completely new genre: the digital, interactive song cycle. Inspired by the allusions to infinity from Jorge L. Borges’ stories, Van der Aa puts us in a space where all places in the world exist simultaneously. A young woman (Kate Miller-Heidke) collects up sand which is being moved between film layers of a mysterious machine. Incorporating three audiovisual layers of film and music, which the user can jump between as they wish. Each layer is based around the same vocal line, but the accompaniment and the film are different for each, meaning that users can create their own paths. Each layer of film shows a different perspective on the story, introducing different alter egos of the central female protagonist.

Media: online project | trailer | music | iPhone app

Artists: Michel Van Der Aa | Kate Miller-Heidke | Nederlands Kamerkoor | Jorge Luis Borges

Partners: Holland Festival | Sydney Festival | Google Cultural Institute | BBC The Space

Press: De Groene | NRC | Volkskrant | Trouw

Shadow theater

Armenian melodies by pianist Tigran Hamasyan, based on modal scales and enriched by frequent yet always discreet ornaments, are matched with harmonic and odd time signatures, tuplets and polyrhythmic sections. Ruben Van Leer translated the musical patterns into a fractal animated journey together with collaborator Julius Horsthuis in the online music film The Cave Of Rebirth. The live visual-music performance Shadow Theater was presented by Festival Jazz A La Viette at venue Cite De La Musique in Paris and broadcasted by ARTE. The cross media project marked a longer collaboration between the Truth.io Foundation and Hamasyan’s music explorations.

Media: Shadow Theater | Video1 | Video2 | Video3 | Video4

Press: VICE | KnackFocus | De Standaard | NU.nl

MORTON F

The legendary vocal artist Joan La Barbara finds herself caught up in a game of cat and mouse with a mysterious character whom she believes to be the reincarnation of iconic composer Morton Feldman. In The Transmigration of Morton F. the worlds of opera, ritual and computer-gaming coalesce. Commissioned by the Holland Festival, director Sjaron Minailo and composer Anat Spiegel’s creation is a fully digital music theatre performance to be experienced online.

Media: 5films | ONLY scene | 360 scene | premiere stream

Partners: Holland Festival | La Monnaie/De Munt | Next Empire

Press: The New York Times | The Wire | VICE | HardHoofd