Computer

Computer integrates text, incisive performance actions and live music to create a fractured dreamscape that explores the disastrous co-evolution of human and machine consciousness.

Uniquely created by group effort, and with a high level of experimentation, Computer is staged as a work-day where coffee breaks are enhanced by musical numbers and the ego or persona of the office computer is embodied by the greatest variety show host of all time, Lawrence Welk.

Expressed through ritualistic performance action, found and created text, songs about things made of paper, and set in a disorienting performance context, Computer attempts to turn the maddening monotony and genuine beauty of ordinary life into an artistic product.

“While the show is called Computer, and much of our collaborative work focused directly on that subject, we eventually accepted that this direction was artistically inert. The topic became a way of exploring our general artistic concerns, for example, the sublimity of failure, the fact that boredom is the only truly liberated state of being, and the revolutionary potential of stupid comedy.”