Me and the Machine

THE COMPANY

Me and the Machine will present When We Meet Again (Introduced as Friends) a one-to-one performance and wearable film at Laban on Friday 3 February.

Me and the Machine is Sam Pearson (UK) and Clara García Fraile (Spain).   Their works combine innovative uses of everyday audiovisual technology and interactive media with choreographed performance, evocative text and poetic imagery.   Audiences are invited to engage performatively in unique immersive sensorial experiences, being dislocated into hybrid realms, somewhere in between reality and fiction, between you and me, between what we imagine, what you imagine and what you can touch and feel.   Inspired by magical realism, town squares with benches and scientific reports no one really understands, these adventurous works develop over extensive research and experimentation.  The two met while studying Performance and Visual Art at the University of Brighton, where they graduated in 2008. Since then, they have gone on to develop a distinct and acclaimed body of work and tour extensively around the UK and Europe, picking up several awards along the way.  They are now based in UK and Spain.   Me and the Machine are an associate company of The Basement, UK and receive ongoing support from British Council, Blast Theory and South East Dance.

THE WORK

Title of the work: When We Meet Again (Introduced as Friends)
All content created by: Me and the Machine
Composer: All content created by Me and the Machine
Design: All content created by Me and the Machine
Duration: 8-10 minutes each audience member

“The first time we met, you could see me but I couldn’t see you…”, the invisible woman recounts.  When We Meet Again is a wearable film and one-to-one performance, a bizarre sensuous experience featuring you, your invisible friend, a 3D soundtrack, an old forgotten dance, an ocean, a flavor and me.  Video filmed from a first person perspective is played on video goggles, replacing your point of view by that of a performer in the screen. When you are prompted to look down upon your body, what you see is… someone else’s. The brain is tricked into the illusion of being inside a new body and in a foreign space, through which you move and encounter mysterious invisible presences (the performer who interacts with you). Enhanced through the use of smell, taste, touch and an immersive binaural soundtrack, When We Meet Again transports you into a mixed reality between the ambiguous physicality of the screen, the ghostly realm of an invisible live performer, the virtual that feels real and vice-versa.   With an innovative approach to film-viewing, this piece reflects on the nature of human encounters and the function (and de-function) of the body in our media inundated times.

CONTACT

Sam Pearson, Artist
E:  sam@meandthemachine.co.uk