Super Vision (The Builders Association and dbox

[Helene]

I just returned from On the Boards, where I saw the 75-minute piece Super Vision, performed by The Builders Association and dbox.

The play is built around three separate story lines: a young, computer savvy woman from Sri Lanka who is living in New York and who communicates with her grandmother in Sri Lanka through her PC, working on a project to "digitize" her grandmother's existence when her corporal one is still alive; a thirty-something businessman of Indian descent who is travelling to the US on business from his native Uganda and encounters US immigration officials; and a family of three living beyond their means on credit and the "creative" way the father juggles the family's finances. Scenes from each story line are presented in rotation.

The set consists of a backdrop, against which remarkable 3-D computer-generated images are projected. Downstage are several movable, transparent screens, which also serve to display images, including those of the actors who sit in a long table in front of the stage's apron with computer cameras capturing their performances and "morphing" them into the action on stage. The only props are computer furniture, computers, and other tech devices, like scanners.

The overarching theme is the way data is gathered, used, and manipulated and its relationship to the users' and gatherer's power or lack thereof. Patterning as a means of detection, whether justified or not, whether correct or corrupted, is contrasted by the only way out: erasing one's existence. As esoteric as that may sound, among what is portrayed onstage is the constant tension of living under the foot of credit; the conflict of being an entrepreneur supporting an extended family in a cutting edge industry and an important person in his own land, but having brown skin, coming from an African country, belonging to the "wrong" religion; the situation of having every mechanical gadget imaginable, but finding interest only in birdwatching; the use of technology to set up a care and communication system for an elderly relative halfway across the world, in an interesting update of a traditional role that no longer ties young woman to a home; the danger of information in the hands of the powerful, but semi-informed, bureaucrat. And the acting was simply superb, particularly Rizwan Mirza as the Traveller, David Pence as the father, and Moe Angelos as the grandmother.

While there was enough humor -- some of it gallows humor, in retrospect, particularly a dubious "happy" ending. where we're supposed to celebrate that the worst didn't happen -- my pulse was pounding non-stop with tension, anxiety, outrage, and something else that must be generational: the romance with technology. I don't think this is relevant to younger people who've grown up on it and take it for granted, like the young Sri Lankan woman in the play, who does not spend a second that is not attached to a piece of technology, usually multitasking. But I grew up in the Star Trek generation, back in the day when the rocks were made of styrofoam, and the control panels were tacky flashing lights. The 3-D computer graphics made my heart quicken as I associated them with "space, the final frontier," even knowing that the underlying data could be completely false, and even as evidence of the petty and nefarious use of it was right before my eyes.

The upcoming schedule is:

On the Boards (Seattle): November 11-13

Brooklyn Academy of Music: November 29-December 3

Montclair State University: December 8-10

Tramway, Glasgow: May 4-7, 2006

ZeroOne San Jose: August 10-12, 2006

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: October 5-7, 2006

Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago): October 12-14, 2006

UC Davis: November 27-December 2, 2006

If you have a chance to see Super Vision, I can't recommend it enough.

[sandik]

the romance with technology.  I don't think this is relevant to younger people who've grown up on it and take it for granted, like the young Sri Lankan woman in the play, who does not spend a second that is not attached to a piece of technology, usually multitasking.  But I grew up in the Star Trek generation, back in the day when the rocks were made of styrofoam, and the control panels were tacky flashing lights.  The 3-D computer graphics made my heart quicken as I associated them with "space, the final frontier," even knowing that the underlying data could be completely false, and even as evidence of the petty and nefarious use of it was right before my eyes.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm so sorry I wasn't able to see this -- too much stuff on the calendar.

I am from the same Star Trek demographic -- I am a sucker for flashing lights and the implied power of the silicon chip. Another group that affects me this way is Dumb Type, from Japan. It's often like a three-ring circus that I only understand in flashes, but it leaves me with an uneasy feeling.