PIPS:lab Brings SOCIAL FICTION to Theatre Junction GRAND Tonight

Returning to Theatre Junction GRAND with another Canadian premiere after last season's DieSpace 3.0, Artistic Director Mark Lawes is thrilled to present, direct from Amsterdam, PIPS:lab's acclaimed Social Fiction. This unique work is an interactive, multi-media performance in real-time, breaking the boundaries between theatre, cinema and video games. Four shows only, from tonight, November 19, to November 22.

What would happen if you could trade your reality for a newer and better reality? What if privacy was the only sacrifice? Social Fiction is a frantic search to translate the impermanent yet indelible nature of online information, networks and friendships into contemporary theatre. Mark Lawes is looking forward to treating local audiences to another incomparable work from these funny, absurd and on-point gamers of the mediated world, "These theatre pioneers, an anarchist clan of image wizards, media geniuses and natural born inventors, are bridging the gap between virtual technology and the unpredictable live act on stage." Social Fiction, where the personification of social media makes an appearance, is soaked with funky music, and rewards with a grand finale.

Every day, social media asks us to provide private information. We give it freely, because through these services we connect and share in a way that has never before been possible. Does this mean that in the future all social interactions will be perceived as 'fiction' if they are online? It is in this not-so-distant world that Social Fiction explores the phenomenon of social media, where a social life may now consist of browsing the web, preferably without personal commitment. However, this future turns out to be a mendacious reality show. Whoever doesn't follow, doesn't count...

With Social Fiction, PIPS:lab company members want to contribute in their own way to the digital reali-Zeitgeist, "We use the latest technology in combination with our own developed tools and software to bring the audience into an augmented state of confusion. As a theatre and arts collective, we see it as our task to take live audiences to other dimensions and have them experience how we can design our own future." Artificial intelligence has left its adolescence behind; PIPS:lab and its audience will be completely guided by a self-learned computer system dominated by the algorithm: if this, then that.

During the piece, information and physical likenesses are extorted from the performers and the audience. People are followed and scanned. Text messages get published and fall apart: seemingly meaningless, but forever saved and traceable. All the collected and constructed elements in this interactive show are recorded three dimensionally with PIPS:lab's 'Potator', allowing for an original and one-of-a-kind motion capture installation. PIPS:lab has been experimenting with the Mo-Cap, a motion capture studio that transfers movement into data. One of the tools that derived from these experiments is the 'Potator', an installation that processes peels of images into a combination of paint and canvas in 3D.

PIPS:lab is: Keez Duyves (artist/inventor), Thijs de Wit (actor/artist), Yorick Heerkens (actor/performer), Daniël van West (composer/artist) and Willem Weemhoff (video/artist).

Originating in the dark corners of the Amsterdam underground party scene, PIPS:lab has conquered the theatre, pop and art world in the 15 years of their existence. The work of their company moves in the future, exploring anonymous authenticity, avatars, blogospheres, ego searches, feeds and instant messaging. The computer is their mixing tool, blending music, theatre, film and a healthy dose of comedy into absurd media theatre and ingenious installations. The company is one of the pioneers in light writing. A PIPS:lab project must always include multiple art forms and the audience must always be involved. Their work is totally self-made - they produce their own software and hardware, creating interactive technologies where fiction and reality are mashed up. DieSpace 3.0 offered audiences the 'first online community for the dead'. They tour all over the world with their performances. Please click for more information about Social Fiction.

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