manτεία /
Sunday, Dec 22 /
3.30pm – 4.30pm and 7.30pm – 8.30pm /
The Box
Freespace
WestK
manτεία (meaning prophecy or divination) is a new performance written and produced by MBow (Roberto Alonso Trillo and Peter Nelson) that examines how ancient practices of geomancy and divination relate to our desire to find meaning in AI. Apophenia is the human tendency to look for meaningful patterns in random patterns, from the shapes of clouds to the scratches in oracle bones, to the outputs of AI generators. As our cultures grapple with the rapid evolution of AI, manτεία returns us to the ancient quest to communicate with the transcendent, by looking for messages in clouds and melodies in noise. Premiering at Freespace West Kowloon on the 22nd of December 2024, manτεία uses a unique approach to artistic collaboration, where artists produce sculptures, compositions and virtual worlds that send signals to one another, linking them together into a chain of creation via a technical process known as ‘multimodal mapping’. A giant mechanical sculpture will create an irregular heartbeat that drives a sculpture made of smoke. A costume provides a digital portal into another world, and an AI trained on classical texts of Chinese and European mythology tries to find meaning in these heartfelt gestures from young contemporary artists.
𝗢𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆
MBow Limited
𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗗𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀
Roberto Alonso Trillo
Peter A C Nelson
𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀
Taurin Barrera
Joseph Chan
Lazarus Chan Long Fung
Vvzela Kook
Samuel Swope
Davor Vincze
Karen Yu
Current.cam
𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀
Ching Chu
Keung Hoi-Ling
(Appearance by kind permission of Unlock Dancing Plaza.)
𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝗿
Jiafan Weng
𝗟𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗿
Rachel Ip Chun-Lam
𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗿
Allison Fong Tsz-Ching
𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿
Vivia Ho
This Project is financially supported by the Arts Capacity Development Funding Scheme of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The content of this programme does not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
