In the never-ending search for new data languages to understand the world around us, we asked what we could learn from the performing arts.
This led us to team up with Electrico 28 - a theatre company that transports audiences to a state of enhanced awareness by converting the street into a stage.
Together we combined data and theatre to create a new format: the data performance. This format uses public space as a trigger for data to understand the humanity of today.
Understanding the social reality we live in is a complex task. We are surrounded by data that tell us about current issues and challenges, but often we struggle to understand them, gauge their magnitude, or simply feel they are distant.
In response to this reality, the project aims to convey data in a way that moves us, tells stories, creates change, and motivates action.
The performance begins with the audience putting on headphones, and blindfolds, as they are guided by a narrator towards a space and time called the "constant present". When they open their eyes again, the section of street visible is the only reality they can perceive. Any member of the public that then crosses this stage becomes a part of the show, and a symbol of certain truths.
The actors approach members of the public with a microphone, asking simple yet pertinent questions. When the answer is spontaneous, and heard through the intimacy of headphones, it provokes a deeper reflection. Responses to "How are you?" or "What are you doing?", suddenly represent more when the narrator informs us of data that places them in the wider current moment we are living in.
By interacting and playing with this snapshot, we witness a spontaneous and unpredictable sample of the world we are part of. Through this medium, we capture the vital signs of our society, the people who inhabit it, and the relationships that bind them together.
When the audience rejoins the hustle and bustle they have been observing, they do so with a newly tilted perspective and a certain awareness that things are not as mundane as they seem.
