The Gathering is an audiovisual theatre performance that A-li-ce and I developed for the opening of the national theatre Maison de la Culture de Bourges (MCB), where it premiered on 25 September 2021.
Live-mixed archival footage from 1926 to 1990, provided by the French film archive Ciclic, and an AI-assisted co-host tell the story of an annual congress of interstellar colonies aboard a spacecraft belonging to the space corporation Noveltex. During a historical lecture, the onboard computer is hacked. Before security can be restored through the deployment of surveillance drones, the audience discovers that they are on an uncertain journey towards a new home planet.
Eight-channel sound design, video mapping on the side walls of the auditorium, and drone flights through the hall blur the traditional boundary between stage and audience. Gradually, the theatre performance becomes an immersive spatial experience. At the end of the performance, the audience lands beside the newly inaugurated MCB building.
Duration: 90 min
Live Video: A-li-ce
Live Audio: Swub
Host: Jean-Benoît Pechberty
Production Manager: Rémi Pailhou
Concept and Direction: A-li-ce and Swub
8-channel surround sound / French
France 2021
Co-produced by Maison de la Culture de Bourges (MCB), Ciclic and Antre Peaux, Bourges (FR).
Production
Excerpt from the script
As you know, the exoplanet CVL3741-A, better known as Alpha Terra, was the first planet colonised by our ancestors from Earth. At the beginning of the 21st century, the colonisation of space, once considered a utopian dream, became a tangible project.
Driven by the lucrative space tourism business, which began in 2021 as an ambitious race between a handful of millionaires, technology advanced rapidly over just a few decades, fuelled by enormous private investment. Meanwhile, increasing computing power enabled exponential progress in artificial intelligence.
Following the worldwide social unrest at the end of the prolonged global economic crisis, costly government space programmes such as NASA’s were no longer politically viable and were discontinued. It was the Noveltex group that ultimately achieved a breakthrough in the energy transition, using AI as its key technology. This not only made it possible to generate energy on Earth without consuming resources, but also solved the propulsion problem for spacecraft undertaking journeys lasting decades.
In 2201, the first drones landed on the exoplanet Alpha Terra, exactly six light-years from Earth. Noveltex explored the planet for several months, collecting biological data across its entire surface. The findings revealed that its nitrogen, carbon, methane and oxygen levels allowed humans to live there.
A few years later, the first group of Earth humanoids was finally sent to the planet. As the Alpha Terra colony, they opened a new chapter in human history. Further colonies soon followed on the three planets Delta, Gamma and Zeta, which, like Alpha Terra, all lie within the magnetic field of their shared star, Alma.
[…]
After the catastrophe on Zeta, knowing full well that the same fate would befall the other colonised planets, the Noveltex authorities selected members from each colony and brought them together aboard this spacecraft.
And here you are …
