live animation performance, 11:20

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This live performance is about an audition for a computer game character, judged by a Japanese computer game director. Three avatars are auditioned for this role, requiring them to move back and forth between the thin line between reality and fiction, which becomes blurred as the plot unfolds. Using a motion-capture suit, the movements of the human actor are translated into those of the on-screen image, which for the spectators actually represents the “real” actor, much like a digital text of ones and zeroes is commonly perceived as the representation rather than the origin of the moving computer image. In that, the digital person challenges our ideas about truth and its mediation, human and computer nature, and the very necessity of insisting on the boundary between them. The audition scene is inspired by a 1990s Japanese computer game called “The Final Fantasy”, about a love affair between two avatars. The desire for human contact on the “real” side of the boundary is frustrated, suggested that in a world dominated by screens maintaining distance from others is a prerequisite for professional success, if not for emotional survival.

Actors Neta Shpigelman, Eliya Tsuchida

CGI Yuliya Bogonos

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