DEUS::EX::MACHINA:: Human Geography in a Virtual World - JOHANNESBURG

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DEUS::EX::MACHINA Interactive Live Stream in JHB: The Bioscope Cinema, Milpark

Join us for our final performances of 2023, as part of ARTS ALIVE FESTIVAL !

Joburg Audiences are invited to participate in the interactive online experience, at The Bioscope: SATURDAY 02 December at 11h30 and 13h00.

This unique experience allows you, the viewer, to control the performance in real time, as you send instructions to the dancers in Cape Town, who perform the work live based on audience inputs.

Darkroom Contemporary Dance Theatre’s flagship project, deus::ex::machina - human geography in a virtual world, returns this December to form part of the curated programme for the 2023 Arts Alive Festival in Johannesburg. This hybrid work offers live and online interactivity.

This multiplayer game invites viewers to meet online or in real life, in a shared experience of simulated connection. The deus::ex::machina virtual experience is driven by you, the viewer, and demonstrates a real time exercise in cause and effect, infinite probability and random points of connection. The viewer controls the dancers via a real time voting process through their devices, ultimately affecting each unique experience of the telematic performance, as it unfolds live and via live stream.

The deus::ex::machina experience is designed to mimic an old - school arcade game, and functions as multiplayer game. Over the course of six levels, dancers receive the outcomes of audience inputs via headphones, and each dancers performs their next choreographic phrase as decided by the audience. This codification of human movement, echoes the coded functionality of the work’s interactive telematic elements, speaking to the digitisation of our human experience. 

deus::ex::machina becomes a physical embodiment of man vs machine. No two performances are the same, and each audience experience unique.

deus::ex::machina was developed during, and in response to, the global lockdown in 2020, and has since continued speaking to the universal themes of connection, control, democracy and the digitisation of the human experience. deus::ex::machina is a physical expression of human geography, a search for connection within chaos. Part telematic performance, part interactive online experience, deus::ex::machina is live, real time motion controlled by the audience. 

deus::ex::machina is conceptualised and choreographed by Louise Coetzer, with interactive design by Thingking. 

Follow us for more info: www.facebook.com/darkroomcontemporary / www.instagram.com/darkroomcontemporary or contact [email protected] 

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