-
based on a novel by Herman Hesse.
…the story tells about a fictional country in the far away future.In one of the Academies of some country the brightest minds of the nation are occupied by playing the glass bead game “…a game with all the values of culture” - they are separated from the outer world and completely ignore the problems of outer politics.
The game is said to be taking it's roots from an apparatus that was made up a long time ago by a music professor to help him in the practice of his lessons. It resembled a counting frame, but had a vast number of the glass beads and allowed to construct any musical phrase. Later on, as the book tells, this game was improved and, as a result, created a unique language, based on different combinations of the glass beads, where you could endlessly confront various meanings and categories and translate one media into another. These exercisers where pointless, and the only aim of it was to reach some kind of a balance, harmony or perfection. But the game took up minds and served as a mix of philosophy, art and religion.”