What is time? What is velocity?
Of course every physicist could explain, but how does that relate to human perception?
Why does an hour pass by so slowly when we are sitting in a restaurant hungryly awaiting our food and why is it so short when we are in a pleasant company?
Even though our tool of reference ( the ceasium atom ) has vibrated 33093474372000 times in both cases.
My intention is to shed light upon the discrepancy between objective and subjective perception in this movie. It shows a journey from Frankfurt to New York in 8 hours 26 minutes, taken at a speed of almost 1000 km/h.
Objectively speaking, it shows the fastest mode of travel between these two points in human history. For subjective human perception however, an unbearably long ordeal. The images mirror reality: no cuts, no manipulation - only an accurate portrayal of the flight. The audience is bound to be misled by its own viewing habits.
Those phases of the flight (take off and landing) that seem fastest, are actually the slowest. Up in the clouds the flight subjectively loses all its speed, but not in reality.
The John-Cage-Organ-Art-Project  Halberstadt is another experience that is bound to irritate the audience. No human is able to follow the melodic line, but it exists, objectively speaking.
The flight’s fastest possible velocity (Mach .88) is juxtaposed with the music’s slowest possible velocity (the Halberstadt performance). However, the viewer will perceive unity instead of contrast.
Subjective slowness meets objective slowness.
The flight follows John Cage’s footsteps, connecting significant coordinates in his life on the date of his demise, August 12. New Music brought John Cage to Darmstadt, while Frankfurt was his home for the preparations to EUROPERAS 1&2.
He lived and died in New York and the North Atlantic is his graveyard.
The soundtrack consists of the notes E3, E4, and G5# ; the notes which sounded in Halberstadt during the flight on August 12, 2005

Translation:Tony Clark