Mainnavigation

      • DE
      • EN
    • Watchlist
    • MenuMenu
    You are here:
    1. Studyprojects
    More: Studyprojects

    New Green Land

    2021 ZHdK Fonds für internationale und interkulturelle Dozierenden-/Mittelbau-Projekte

    Departement Darstellende Künste und Film

    New Green Land,Zürcher Hochschule der Künste

    A hybrid theater project in California's Mojave Desert on ecological and social issues

    The city of Mojave is located two hours north of Los Angeles and the emerging dilemmas between nature and human interventions in these are the reason and the basis for locating the project near Mojave. The desert serves as a training ground for bombing. It is a rocket test area and a scrapyard for commercial aircraft. It is cut through by highways, racetracks, railroad tracks and covered with solar parks and wind farms. The main water supply of Los Angeles runs in a pipeline under the desert floor, in which mine shafts remind of the time of the gold diggers. This landscape is a symbol for the age of the Anthropocene. But deep-rooted plants survive years of drought. Coyotes, snakes and bears are still found here. A place full of contradictions, a dystopian metaphor like a stage design of the future.

    The “New Green Land” project takes place live in the desert and the audience witnesses the transmission in a theater space at ZHDK. They meet two performers, with whom they can communicate online. These agents explore a desert area of 100x100 meters. Geotags linked to an AR App provide varied content in the Internet. The agents can see this hypertext as augmented reality on their cell phone screens. The audience virtually look over their shoulders, and is able to communicate with the agents. Calarts students provide their research results with different focuses such as climatic changes, geological investigations, seismic activities, changes in the flora and fauna, the history of the land grabbing, the fate of the Native Americans, the construction of the railroad, the development of the area after the gold rush, the construction of the airports and wind farms.
    This and other content appear as documentary audio and video files, as musical or choreographic instructions from Native Americans, artists, botanists and others, which are executed by the agents. This pilot project is the beginning of a durational piece because 138 geotags are distributed on the site in such a way that they form the corner points of letters. The letters form the three words NEW GREEN LAND, which, standing one below the other, fill the square of 100x100 meters and can be read from the drone's perspective. The sowing of indigenous plant seeds, which is part of the instructions for the agents, leads to a compression of the plants between the individual virtual tags, whereby the words stand out clearly from their surroundings. This long term theater project wants to let words grow and is at the same time an ecological utopia.

    Methods:
    Pratical research on digital tools for the theater of the future

    Aim:
    Practice orientated research of digital tool in contemporary theater

    Conclusion:
    Open

    Details

    • Discipline

      Theater

    • Project Type

      Förderprojekt

    • Field of Study

      Departement Darstellende Künste und Film

    • Authors

      Michael Simon

    • Lecturers

      Prof. Michael Simon

    • Contributors / Further collaborators
      Michael Eickhoff, Akademie für Theater und Digitalität, Dortmund;
      Shannon Scrofano, Calarts; Stella Speziali, ZHdK; Maike Thies, ZHdK; Chris Ziegler, Arizona State University bis Juni 2021; Studierende aus dem MA Theater ZHdK und die Studierenden der Calarts; Natalie Nicholas, Danny Baxter, Zoe Lappin, Harlan Epstein
    • Partners

      ZHdK, Calarts, Akademie für Theater und Digitalität Dortmund, Festivalcampus Ruhrtriennale 2021

    • Date

      2021

    • Links
      https://youtu.be/MEA3UB4yFc4