ALICE is a performative installation, inspired by Lewis Carroll’s book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, in which the audience becomes both observer and performer. Entering as a small group of ‘spect-actors’, they find themselves in a transreal environment, where the physical and the virtual gaze at each other. What is real in this world that holds a mirror up to your face? Did you dream the same dream as others did?

The installation unfolded across two waiting rooms and a central digital mirror. A combination of hidden Kinect cameras for 3D scanning, live coding and voice-to-text transcription, generative text, a synthetic voice, a 1990s telephone, and multi-channel audio operated in real time, producing a system that reacts to the audience’s presence, speech input, and movement. Through this constellation of analogue and digital elements, ALICE constructed a hybrid situation that oscillated between intimacy and exposure, and could be perceived as both private and public at the same time.

The project was commissioned by Gaudeamus and devised by I/O, funded by the Nieuwe Makers subsidy by the Performing Arts Fund NL. It took the team about 6 months of scattered workshops and tryouts with invited audience to develop the concept and the installation itself. The interaction among different art mediums (sound, scenography, lights, coding, video, live performance) took place throughout the process, combining artistic practices and ideas. ALICE was premiered at Gaudeamus Muziekweek 2017 as a 30′-long performance, performed 20 times, and at November Music, performed 8 times.

 

Devising by I/O
Thanasis Deligiannis, artistic direction & sound
Roelof Pothuis, set & light design
David Jonas, creative coding
Daan Hazendonk, sound & video technician
Clare Gallagher, sound advisor

Visit the project’s website at www.aliceperformance.com.
Here you can read an article on NRC about ALICE.