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Silence and DarknessSILENCE & DARKNESS, a live movie for the cell phone age Reviews | Tour | Production Requirements | Additional Information Reviews
“There was striking imagery and a palpable sense of energy about the piece…”
“One of the main emphases of the work was on the ways in which technology (specifically, the cell phone, as well as other technologies through history) mediates human relationships. The work as a whole draws on performance art, virtual reality production, audio and video environmental installations, and physical space acting traditions (from the musical to the poetic emphases in performance art)…The production in a concrete way shows how these performance traditions and digital technologies can be woven together in powerful new forms…”
“These guys make New Jack Theater.”
Tour
In the form of a “live movie,” a fragmented space-age love story of digitized desire is punctuated by passages from Jean Baudrillard’s Simulations, Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, and Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine. Malfunctioning animatronic simulacra of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison, and ghostly prom queens gliding and twitching like high-voltage music-box automata, swirl in an audio-visual time warp, and gyrate to cybernetic songs and soundscapes.
Full-stage, multi-screen, animated digital video projections construct a poor man’s virtual reality, a scenographic montage of global environments, disembodied characters, implanted memories, and strange weather. This “live movie” crosses the machinic-organic divide and examines human myths, tools and consciousness illuminated by the glow of synthetic fire. Cell phoners travel from their corporate barracks, through frenzied streets, to electro-cash markets, cyber-bedrooms, data cubicles, and transhuman clubs, filled with an insatiable desire to “be there now,” ensnared in the beeps and flashes of a world that is no longer ever silent or dark. Production Requirements
Stage Requirements
Personnel Cyburbia Productions provides:
Presenter provides: For the load-in and load-out –
Local Crew for the performance –
Lights and Projections The lighting plot will be provided after Cyburbia Productions receives ground plan, section plan and equipment inventory for the venue. Cyburbia Productions provides:
Presenter provides:
Sound Cyburbia Productions provides:
Presenter provides:
Headsets Presenter provides:
Scenography Cyburbia Productions provides:
Additional InformationABSTRACT: DIRECTOR'S NOTE:
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“The show was fantastic. It made all conventional drama seem old
and limp. It pushed all of the boundaries of theater to the limit.”
Silence & Darkness uses cyber-tools to depict, dissect and critique cyber-culture. The show cinematically unfolds a world in which humans attempt to connect in the flesh, enmeshed in a technosphere of cell phones and satellite dishes, chat rooms and web servers, spy cams and predator drones. 
Carbon-based lifeforms intertwine with silicon beings, as performers
blur from stage to screen and back again—images, words and voices encoded in bits and atoms.
Note: This preliminary technical package is meant to give a general sense of the scope of the production. A more complete rider will be developed for each venue. The show has some parameters that are adaptable. For example, the minimum stage dimensions required are 28' wide X 20' deep. However spaces much wider and deeper are welcome. Also, if a flyhouse is not available, then an overhead grid may be used. Please contact Cyburbia Productions directly with technical questions regarding the suitability of the venue.
SILENCE & DARKNESS uses cyber-tools to critique cyber-culture. The show depicts a
world in which humans attempt to connect in the flesh, enmeshed in a technosphere
of cell phones and satellite dishes, chat rooms and web servers, artificial intelligences
and content providers. In the form of a "live movie," a fragmented space-age story of
love and desire is punctuated by passages from Jean Baudrillard’s SIMULATIONS,
Guy Debord’s SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE, and Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine.
Malfunctioning animatronic simulacra of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva
Edison swirl in an audio-visual time warp, and groove to 21st Century tunes and
techno-industrial soundscapes. Animated video projections construct a sort of
"poor man’s virtual reality" in which cell phoners swarm from corporate barracks
around ghostly prom queens behaving like 18th Century automata, caught in a world
that is no longer ever silent or dark. |
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