DETUNING TIPPING POINTS

A melody takes a variety of notes to exist, just as life depends on a diversity of forms to flourish. Both music and nature weave their beauty from diversity, harmony, and balance. Force them beyond their limits, and they unravel into chaos. A string broken, an ecosystem silenced.

In this performance film, a string quartet of children plays as an unseen force tightens their strings past the breaking point. Their 16 strings symbolize the 16 critical ecological tipping points—rainforests, ice sheets, coral reefs, and other fragile systems nearing collapse. As tension builds, the strings snap, each one a voice silenced, a piece of the planet lost.

This isn’t just fate—it’s deliberate. Overseeing this slow destruction are three businessmen, taking the roles of the Three Fates from Greek mythology. In this story, they are False Fates, not guardians of destiny, but manipulators of it. Bound to the will of money, they decide which futures are sacrificed, which lives end before their time. The third fate, mirroring Atropos—she who severs the thread of life—winds the children’s strings tighter and tighter, forcing them toward inevitable collapse.

This is not an abstract warning. It is happening now. The rich and powerful see the Arctic ice not as a vital ecosystem, but as a future trade route. They see forests not as lungs of the

Earth, but as profit margins. Like an orchestra stripped of its instruments, a world stripped of nature loses its ability to function, to thrive, to create beauty.

A snapped string silences the music. A collapsed ecosystem silences life. How many more must break before we act? They are not fate. They are men. And men can be stopped.