CENTAURS

CENTAURS is an experimental live performance work consisting of a diptych of two stories—The Magpie and The Merman—that explore the impact of technology on intimate relationships through a speculative lens.

Through development thus far, the creative team have established a strong foundation for novel approaches to presentation, including real-time digital face replacement and music driven by voices and biometric data. These approaches aim to echo and rub up against the themes in the narratives: authenticity, deception, identity, and automation’s interactions with real, physical bodies.

Creative Team

Alan Nguyen

Monica Lim

Daniel Jentasch

Michele Lee

Sam McGilp

Sean Healy

PAST WORK SAMPLES

Alan Nguyen: Anthophilia (video excerpt)

Monica Lim: Opera for the Dead (video trailer)

Daniel Jenatsch: The Secret Key (video trailer)

Sam McGilp: Body Crisis (documentation image)

Sam McGilp: Triplet State (documentation image)

CENTAURS: Work in Development

Performance Aspects

BIOMETRIC PIANO

We have developed a system in which a performer’s pulse rate determines the real-time mechanical playing of notes on an acoustic piano. This concept explores the intersection of physical bodies, automated systems, privacy, and technology’s capacity to sense, surveil and expose intimate internal states.

DEEP FAKE THEATRE

This format offers audiences two simultaneous perspectives:

The unmediated onstage performance of actors.
A live cinema version using digital face replacement.

Face replacement is used for dramaturgical purposes such as enabling actors to play multiple roles, realising dream logics, and transforming physical form. Deepfake Theatre explores technology’s influence on identity, authenticity, and deception. As deepfake technology gains greater cultural significance and impact, this performance mode renders its operations transparent to audiences.

EGOCENTRIC LIVE CINEMA

Used both in conjunction with and separately from Deepfake Theatre, this mode experiments with screening live camera feeds from an actor’s perspective. Audiences receive both an objective view of the stage action and a subjective, character-centred perspective within the narrative world. We hope this offers a sense of intimacy in a theatrical context, while exploring subjectivity, persuaded reality, and technologically mediated relationships.