The Builders Association and dbox, SUPER VISION: IMPROVISATION


SUPER VISION tells three stories

1. As he crosses successive borders, a solitary traveller gradually is forced to reveal all of his personal information, until his identity becomes transparent, with no part of his life left outside the boundaries of datasurveillance.

2. A young woman (Jen), addicted to the white noise of constant connection, maintains a long-distance relationship with her Grandmother. As she makes efforts to digitally archive her Grandmother's past, the Grandmother slips into senility.

3. A father covertly exploits his young son's personal data to meet the demands of the family's lifestyle. This ploy escalates beyond the father's control, until he is compelled to disappear. His wife and son are left with a starkly diminished data portrait, and his escape is shadowed by the long reach of the datasphere.


Moe Angelos

Nick Kaye: How did the script evolve in relation to the improvisation? Were you working directly with Constance DeJong?

Moe Angelos: It’s kind of funny. Constance presented us with a script and then - a lot of time it is unintentional. There is a lot of waiting for the tech to catch up: they have to set the cues, especially the video. There is a lot of pausing, if they are rendering a cue or something or they have to switch between effects programmes. While that is happening, we will just be horsing around.

Nick Kaye: So the different layers of media are being evolved at the same time that you are working on the script.

Moe Angelos: Oh, yes, from the very beginning. That is the unusual thing about The Builders’ rehearsal process. I was speaking to an actor friend last night after the show and she was saying, ‘Wow, the tech rehearsal must be really crazy’. Well, actually, the whole process is like one long technical rehearsal because the technology is with us in the room all the time, including the lighting, because of course the lighting must interplay with the screens and the projections. It is so subtle, because we front and rear project onto the screens - and a person is between those screens acting and has to be seen while you can still what’s in front and back. That’s quite tricky.


Tanya Selvaratnam

Nick Kaye: How did the relationship between the performers and the virtual environment develop in rehearsal?

Tanya Selvaratnam: When we are at the workshop stage there is a lot of improvisation - I would say 80% improvisation - so you have technical people, the video and sound technicians, improvising with us. Things would get projected onto the screen spontaneously while we were performing - and that is where a lot of the visuals evolved, in this live improvisation with the technology.

Nick Kaye: Does that include your own mediation into the performance as Jen?

Tanya Selvaratnam:Our ideas are all in the same incubator – so yes, but to a limited degree because I am not operating the controls. These are people I have worked with for a long time so it is almost hard to know where the idea begins and where it ends, but the power of the technology really rests with the technicians. If anything the technology controls me more.

Nick Kaye: In what way?

Tanya Selvaratnam:Well, because I am not free to move. I am only free to move so much as the technology frames me. One of the biggest nuisances I have every night is dealing with the video camera – I mean I have been dealing with video cameras for ten years, but my back is to the audience and my whole performance is just what they can see of my face in that camera. It is not natural, really.


see also: live media | immersiveness | prologue |


SUPER VISION credits