Three apparently independent stories make up IMmediaCY:
1. Operator Surface (OS) is the host of the show, "touring" the audience through the imaginary computer. As a "welcoming program" his task is to cater to the audience's expectations. He is an ambiguous persona, pretending to be a piano, a confessional, a smart bomb. He knows things about the public, and provokes them. As an advocate of the world of IMmediaCY, his desire is to assist the audience in having everything within their arm's length, at their fingertips, and the tip of their tongue. His celebration of technology is eventually marred by the mediator's paradox: he who brings things together also obstructs their union.
2. The climacteric relationship between two real historical characters:
Giulio Camillo Delminio
was a famous I6 century Venetian who invented the "Memory Theatre". His
Vitruvian structure was adapted for the storage and immediate recollection of
icons and texts in the Hermetic and Cabalistic traditions. As a precursor to
the computer and cyberspace, the Memory Theatre makes Camillo an early
proponent of the "externalized mind". In IMmediaCY Camillo divulges the secret
of his memory theatre, demonstrating the procedure by using examples from local
icons and landmarks.
Mnemonist S_ was a Russian from the early 20th century whose perfect memory was studied by A. R. Luria a few decades ago. The famous case study broke several precepts about the human capacity to remember. In IMmediaCY Mnemonist S_ is a circus dancer who "remembers" by assuming different positions of her body. Her extraordinary memory is also her curse. Meeting Camillo would add an extra twist to her fate.
3. The Zulu myth of the chameleon and the lizard, which explains mortality. Death as the ultimate form of forgetting, the mandatory disappearance of everything that changes rapidly, the cold blood immortality, these are some of the themes invoked by this myth.
FORMAL ASPECTS
IMmediaCY is a musical theatre. The soundtrack features an eclectic approach to real-time processing, extensive sampling, and a wide array of digital and analogue instruments. The repertoire fluctuates between experimental improvisational music and popular styles, simultaneously satisfying and frustrating most musical tastes. Formally, Steve Gibson notes: "IMmediaCY is an ambiguous structure, featuring contradicting processes of deconstruction and reconstruction at the same time, if only with an overall reversal of which one is foregrounded". What happens when hip hop is next to Monteverdi?
The scenography consists of rear-projected 2 & 3D computer animation, video
footage, and cameras on the performers and the audience. Live visualisation,
transformation and distortion help the visual (dis)array.
An innovative aspect of IMmediaCY is the theatrical device we call "plug-in
modules". These are empty segments within the narrative and design of the show
that are "filled-in' using variable resources. Examples of plug-ins are:
-
Remote video connections to actors touring the host city.
"Commercials" featuring Cameo appearances by authoritative artists and scientists.
Processed images of the audience used as part of the narrative.
"Dirty" statistics from the host city.
The plug-ins tend to be polemic and different in each city, achieving site specificity. The themes of the plug-ins include "your city is a computer", "you are a computer", and "you are a city (network)".
