THE SHADOW MACHINE by
Peter Courtemanche, Ken Gregory, Carol Sawyer, Alvin Erasga Tolentino
In the first days of the industrial revolution, people were appalled by the machine's cruel and relentless rhythms. These initial criticisms gradually gave way to utopian rhetoric extolling the power, productivity, and potential liberation from drudgery promised by mechanization. By the beginning of the twentieth century, artists used machines as idealized models of perfection, and sought to emulate them in dance, visual art, and music. Disenchantment with industry and the shift to a post industrial society have marked the subsequent era.
The ambivalence that has characterized humankind's attitude to industry interests us. Are machines our merciless enslavers, or the emancipators that will lead us to a new utopia? The Shadow Machine is a performance work that combines dance, projected images, and acoustic and electro-acoustic sounds to explore how our bodies are transformed by interaction with technology. Devices as simple as shovels and as complex as computers will be employed.
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