Musical Theater, Composition
- Title: Cat-Dog
- Type: Musical Theater, Composition
- Concept and Design: Greg Beller
- Performers : Lin Chen and Lini Gong – voice, face and computer keyboard
- Video: Janina Luckow aKa KLARA
- Additional programming and support: Jacob Sello
- Duration: 14min
- World Premiere: Blurred edges Festival, Hamburg, 03 June 2021, Künstlerhaus FAKTOR e.V.
- Live streaming and recording: https://youtu.be/Rvmu6top4K0
- Production:
- Xiao Fu, Büro für problematische Komposition – “Multimedia takes the risk“. The office for problematic composition is an association of multimedia composers and video artists. Taking risks and trying them out, as well as putting the experiment central to the ensemble is an obligation for all its members.
- The Synekine project
- HfMT Hamburg
- Blurred edges Festival
Social networks are home to the worst garbage that human beings are capable of. Modern slaves, digital cleaners spend their days categorizing obnoxious content on the web. Balancing morals, these moderators of content wander the fragile line between tolerance and censorship while being bombarded with rubbish.
Categorizing the best of the worst, from cats and dogs to cars and bikes, is now the fuel for artificial intelligence at the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. And it’s not just these digital garbage collectors who contribute, all of us are swapping our understanding of the world, in the form of viewing time and discernment clicks, for free services and entertaining content, mediated by social platforms. These contents and services, mainly financed by advertising, are personalized by this artificial intelligence that we feed.
The world we contemplate then becomes circumscribed, no longer to our capacity to perceive it, but to that of producing it. Reflections of a sociality impoverished by virtuality, social networks become distorting mirrors of a narcissistic society whose nightmares are thrown in the trash by digital garbage collectors.
Cat-Dog is a tribute to these shadowworkers, a mischievous and selfless attempt to provide them with an entertaining break, a warm and human ray of sunshine reaching the depths of the Styx.