MEDIATHEK

In the frame of Sustenance – MusicMakers Hacklab Finale

CTM Festival 2024

Songs for NPCs is an anti-futurist XR concert. It uses the videogame analogy of “users” and “NPCs” (Non-Playable character) to talk about power dynamics between humans, such as class and gender; as well as our abusive behaviour towards other forms of life on earth.

This multimedia performance uses Motion Capture to animate multiple human and non-human characters in real time. The characters represent a “user” or an “NPC” in a “future” designed around technologies like AI, XR, space travel and bioengineering.

Each scene is a song with a different 3D world and character with their unique singing voice and role in the global ecosystem of the performance. The different voices come together to create a critique that uses humour and provocation to examine the abusive dynamics of the tech industry. 

About MusicMakers Hacklab

The MusicMakers Hacklab is an open, collaborative environment where participants work together during CTM Festival week to explore and realise new musical ideas. Following an intensive week of collaboration in the radialsystem studios, a group of 10 fellows selected via open call will put their ideas to a test in a finale performance at radialsystem Halle.

Hacklab 2024 explores the idea of Sustenance, which is a contrast to our usual artistic language of appetites and hunger. We talk about burning energy to produce, but less often about how art feeds us. We talk about consuming, but not about whether our work feeds ourselves and others. Sustenance recognises that for all our narratives about markets and success, many artists live below subsistence levels. What does it mean to find nourishment in what we do? Can we escape competitive models of creation that assume finite resources? Against the background of the CTM 2024 theme of "Sustain", what gives us actual sustenance?

The 2024 Hacklab fellows are: Amanda Bennetts, Claudix Vanesix, Dimitris Mertzos, Gisou Golshani (withdrew), Ivan Skoryna, Josefina Maro, Tobi Pfeil, Valeriia Khazan, Qusay Awad, Zalán Szakács. Hosted by Sophia Bulgakova and Darsha Hewitt.

[mt]

Powered by Froala Editor