FuturePerfect is a performance, media, visual art, & technology production company based in New York City. FuturePerfect helps to chart and generate new directions in performance by commissioning, producing and presenting hybrid performance practices and artistic ideas that continue to emerge as computers, communication networks and other non-human systems become increasingly ubiquitous and part of contemporary culture. Wayne Ashley, the former Director of Arts in Multimedia at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), founded the company in 2009. futureperfectproductions.org
FuturePerfect's most recent project, Shuffle, a performance installation created by Elevator Repair Service with Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen, premiered at The New York Public Library on May 21 2011.
Shuffle was commissioned by FuturePerfect and The New York Public Library on the occasion of its Centennial.
Shuffle is an entirely new kind of ERS performance, one with constantly re-generated text and a dream-like logic. In this work the company looks back on its last three pieces, informed by current research in database aesthetics—the role of data in creating new ways of experiencing and making art. The result is a site-specific (fever dream) where the company attempts to read “The Great Gatsby,” “The Sound and the Fury” and “The Sun Also Rises” simultaneously. The rearranged and overlapping texts produce compelling visual displays designed by Rubin and surprising, often absurd, micro-theater featuring many veteran ERS performers. Audience is encouraged to wander among the performers as they improvise . With scripts generated in real time by digital algorithms, phrases from the iconic novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway merge to create a look back at some of America’s favorite texts that are at once disorienting and enlightening.
Credits
Director: John Collins, Elevator Repair Service
Text Processing and Design: Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen
Producer: Ariana Smart Truman
Stage Manager/Assistant Director: Sarah Hughes
Technical Director: Michael Clemow
Company Manager: Lindsay Hockaday
Assistant to the Director: Katherine Brook
Collaborators:
Frank Boyd
Sarah Hughes
Mike Iveson
Vin Knight
Annie McNamara
Kate Scelsa
Kaneza Schaal
Scott Shepherd
Susie Sokol
Lucy Taylor
Matt Tierney
Victoria Vazquez
Ben Williams
NYPL Centennial Festival Director: Caro Llewellyn
Video by Davide Montecchi youtube.com/user/dmontecc
Video produced by FuturePerfect
Copyright 2011 FuturePerfect