Co-Lab 2024 - DEEP_FAKE

Students embarked on an investigation into the theme of Deep-Fake, spanning technology, performance, and reality, seeking to question and challenge the concept of authenticity in live performance. By exploring the theme of Deep-Fake within performance contexts, students delved into the complexities of creating believable worlds and personas, utilizing technology, emotions, tone, sound, visuals, text and movement, exploring notions of authenticity and the imagined, inviting the audience to join them in exploring the intricate interplay between artifice, reality, and the realms of the imagined within live performance.

Students were given parameters, a small budget, three to four weeks to rehearse, design and run technical rehearsals for their work-in-progress showings to form a triptych of works to span the fall semester. The first two performances take place in Studio T and their last work will be a design-led installation-performances throughout the SCA building.

As a class we asked many questions: What happens when the audience is able to view the construction of a fake world? What happens in the space between nonfiction and fiction? What is the truth depending on whose perspective is viewing the event? What does the mixture of truths and falsehoods reveal, both devastating and humorous, about humanity’s course and what warnings might be sounded for our future?