Philip Speakman

Katabasing
performance for virtual production studio
(7x3m screen running real time Unreal Engine environment, motion tracking, live performance, sound, camera rig, torch prop)
17:26
2024

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As part of ‘Mudsimmer’ on 04/05/24 at Gossamer Fog’s Alt_R

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Katabasing considers how new technologies inevitably give rise to new occult narratives and beliefs, and the aesthetic sensations which drive these beliefs online. 

 

Made for Gossamer Fog’s Alt_R virtual production studio, and continuing in their Ringlorn season of events, the work uses Alt_R to tell the story a documentary production’s investigation into a viral trend emanating from the weird seam of the internet, using the 7x3m screen, motion tracking, Unreal Engine 5, live performance and sound design to tell the story through live physical interactions with virtual space. 

 

As the performance unwinds, the work draws on theories of play, re-enactment and LARPing, as well as real esoteric online subcultures, ritual magic, internet folklore and Netflix true crime shows, to explore the affects and techniques these different viral content and cultures deploy to inform and infect our sense of reality online and offline. The work speculates on the repercussions of these references when stretched to weird extremes, and sets this manipulation of our feeling-for-the-real against the powers of the legendary Greek poet Orpheus, who was said to be able to move animals and the natural world using the power of his words and song, eventually using these powers to gain access and travel into the underworld, an act known in the ancient work as Katabasis. 

 

Unreal Engine and technical production by Sam Capps

Sound design and score by Oh2pz

Interviewee voice acting by Tash Rowan

With thanks to Gossamer Fog, Sam Capps, Diane Edwards and Billy Sassi.