Why Am I Here?

Why Am I Here? from Toni Dove on Vimeo.

This excerpt is from the opening of Toni Dove's Lucid Possession performed at Roulette in Brooklyn, 2013.

Co-Producers for the Roulette presentation: Issue Project Room, HERE and Roulette.

Performed by Toni Dove, Hai-Ting Chinn, with a live score by Todd Reynolds
Songs composed by Elliott Sharp
Bob McGrath: Co-Director of Staging
R. Luke DuBois: Software Design
Ed Bear and Matt Tennie: Technical Directors, live robotics and sound control


Musicians, a VJ, and robotic screens combine to present the performance of a contemporary ghost story—a poetic musing on managing the mass of information ”noise.” The audience is drawn into a world in which video characters come to life: the wave of a hand moves a video body, and video characters lip synch live to a singer. The players onstage collectively perform the movie, which spills off the dynamic, dimensional screens onto the stage.

Lucid Possession is a schizophrenic duet between a woman with a head like a radio receiver and her own avatar. The result is like a complex three-dimensional, automated video pop-up book, and as characters are brought to life through motion, voice, and robotics, the boundaries of the real and virtual are blurred. It’s a form of cinematic bunraku, separating voice, movement, music, live and filmed performance—fragmented elements that only become a whole in the moment the piece is performed.

In the story, Bean, a young designer of virtual personalities, is so deeply engaged in her programming, that it has escalated her skills into the realm of the supernatural. Her mind is like a live Twitter feed without the technology, a radio station of flesh and bone: she picks up what people think. She creates an avatar, an exaggerated alter ego that goes viral on the Internet and makes her a minor celebrity. People stop her on the street: they want something, and she isn’t sure what it is. The anxiety exponentially increases her paranormal sensitivities, and a ghost from the past emerges from the noise to act as a guide.

www.tonidove.com

Cast
Bean: Hai-Ting Chin
Theo: Bora Yoon
Kal: Andrew Schneider
Voice of Arathusa: Carolyn McCormick
Arathusa on video: Wendy Vierow
Voice of Petbot: Simon Jones

Writer, director, interaction design: Toni Dove
Co-Director of staging: Bob McGrath, Ridge Theater
Software design: R. Luke DuBois
Composer of Song cycle: Elliott Sharp
Robotics and control systems: Ed Bear and Leif Krinkle
Costume and screen design/fabrication: Karen Young
Cinematic sound design: Medianoise
Additional sound design: Paul Geluso
Technical direction: Leif Krinkle, Ed Bear, Matty Ostrowski, Janet Clancy
Executive Producers: Ed Patuto and Issue Project Room, Kim Whitener at Here
Producer: Jared Trimble
Assistant Producer: Amy Helfant

Developed as part of Harp series, HERE
Technical residency at EMPAC, Troy, NY
Co-Produced by Republique Theater, Copenhagen
Funding is due in part to the generous support of:
The New York State Council on the Arts
New Spectrum Foundation, MediaThe Foundation, The Experimental TV Center
Fiscal Agent: Issue Project Room