In this empty room lit with a single fluorescent light is a hospital bed and the Last Moment Robot by the bedside. The robot is constructed as a medical device with a padded, caressing arm and a customized recording device designed to guide and comfort the dying patient. The whole event is carefully scripted.

Viewers of this installation are invited to enter the room one at a time, accompanied by an individual dressed in a doctor’s coat. After the patient lies down beside the robot, the doctor asks permission to insert his or her arm under the caressing mechanism. The device is activated, and an LED screen reads “Detecting end of life.” At this point, the doctor exits the room, leaving the patient alone by him or herself. Within moments the LED reads “End of life detected”, the robotic arm begins its caressing action, moving back and forth, stimulating a sense of comfort during the dying process. The Last Moment Robot takes the idea of human replacement to a more extreme scale. It allows robotic intimacy technology to be re-evaluated.

The work shown here is in prototype form.

While the three-hour play overwhelms its audience with a hail of simultaneous information, action, sound, text and performance, the VR scenery tells a story of memories and transience: from the moment one enters, the walls and textures show increasing traces of decomposition. In the background there is an atmospheric noise of music and texts, scenes that once might have taken place here. Scenes from Die Borderline Prozession are shown on the screens; life in all its facets in contrast to the transience of the virtual world.

As a work made for VR, The Memories of Borderline creates a new, hybrid form of art: a combination of visual art, media art, gaming and performance art. It explores the potential of theater working with new technology, creating an innovative form of narration in theater: the user becomes their own narrator.

Credits

Schauspiel Dortmund, CyberRäuber (Marcel Karnapke and Björn Lengers)
Director: Kay Voges, Schauspiel Dortmund
Engineering, 360° camera: Björn Lengers, Marcel Karnapke
Video art, motion capture: Mario Simon
Director of photography, lighting design: Voxi Bärenklau
Stage design: Michael Sieberock-Serafimowitsch
Costume design: Mona Ulrich
Composition, music: Tommy Finke
Coding: Lucas Pleß
Authors: Kay Voges, Dirk Baumann, Alexander Kerlin
Actors: Paulina Alpen, Amelie Barth, Andreas Beck, Carl Bruchhäuser, Raafat Daboul, Ekkehard Freye, Frank Genser, Caroline Hanke, Christoph Jöde, Thomas Kaschel, Marlena Keil, Nils Kretschmer, Anja Kunzmann, Bettina Lieder, Eva Verena Müller, Lorenz Nolting, Uwe Rohbeck, Uwe Schmieder, Julia Schubert, Friederike Tiefenbacher, David Vormweg, Merle Wasmuth, Michael Wischniowski

Light as a reference to the soul and consciousness glows in a gelatin cube, thus at the same time serving as a source of information. While the light glows, people’s assumptions about the world are synthesized in an artificial neural network (ANN) and modified into a machine discourse. Mold (life) slowly grows over the fluorescent gelatin, until the light is extinguished and the metaphysical discussion ends.

Credits

Supported and produced by Us(c)hi Reiter— servus.at
Translation: Aileen Derieg
FIFO programming: Oliver Frommel
Supported by Kunstuniversität Linz

Thanks to Free/Libre Open Source Software, http://fsfe.org/

Partly funded by the Bundeskanzleramt Kunst & Kultur as part of the servus.at annual program 2017 and by Linz Kultur

The occurrence of phytoplankton was a crucial phase in the development of cellular life on earth. Through photosynthesis this “eco-synthesizer” not only transforms carbon dioxide into organic matter – the basis of our food – but also additionally produces more than half the oxygen in the atmosphere of the earth. During the night its remaining energy is radiated as bioluminescence – a phenomenon that is still puzzling today.

In the setting of Luminiferous Drift double emulsion photocells are released into a rotating bath of water. The energy generated by the movement is released in a chemical reaction and given off in the form of light.

* The first living cells capable of self-multiplication.

Credits

portablepalace.com/luminiferous.html
in association with Jean-Marc Chomaz