A hybrid theater project in California's Mojave Desert on ecological and social issues
The city of Mojave is located two hours north of Los Angeles and the emerging dilemmas between nature and human interventions in these are the reason and the basis for locating the project near Mojave. The desert serves as a training ground for bombing. It is a rocket test area and a scrapyard for commercial aircraft. It is cut through by highways, racetracks, railroad tracks and covered with solar parks and wind farms. The main water supply of Los Angeles runs in a pipeline under the desert floor, in which mine shafts remind of the time of the gold diggers. This landscape is a symbol for the age of the Anthropocene. But deep-rooted plants survive years of drought. Coyotes, snakes and bears are still found here. A place full of contradictions, a dystopian metaphor like a stage design of the future.
The “New Green Land” project takes place live in the desert and the audience witnesses the transmission in a theater space at ZHDK. They meet two performers, with whom they can communicate online. These agents explore a desert area of 100x100 meters. Geotags linked to an AR App provide varied content in the Internet. The agents can see this hypertext as augmented reality on their cell phone screens. The audience virtually look over their shoulders, and is able to communicate with the agents. Calarts students provide their research results with different focuses such as climatic changes, geological investigations, seismic activities, changes in the flora and fauna, the history of the land grabbing, the fate of the Native Americans, the construction of the railroad, the development of the area after the gold rush, the construction of the airports and wind farms.
This and other content appear as documentary audio and video files, as musical or choreographic instructions from Native Americans, artists, botanists and others, which are executed by the agents. This pilot project is the beginning of a durational piece because 138 geotags are distributed on the site in such a way that they form the corner points of letters. The letters form the three words NEW GREEN LAND, which, standing one below the other, fill the square of 100x100 meters and can be read from the drone's perspective. The sowing of indigenous plant seeds, which is part of the instructions for the agents, leads to a compression of the plants between the individual virtual tags, whereby the words stand out clearly from their surroundings. This long term theater project wants to let words grow and is at the same time an ecological utopia.
Methods:
Pratical research on digital tools for the theater of the future
Aim:
Practice orientated research of digital tool in contemporary theater
Conclusion:
Open