FEED.X
Immersive Performance, 2018
Video, Fog, Stroboscopes, Pulse Lights, Surround Sound
FEED.X is a performance set in an artificial environment without human performers in the flesh. It’s visceral in nature.
The precursor and now classic FEED, was conceived in 2004, as a special creation for the Theater Biennial in Venice and
designed to convey a duality of the real and the rendered, virtual space. What was then an emerging context has now become
a part of day to day reality, still increasingly so.
FEED.X, today, makes less of a sensual distinction between the real and the simulated, instead staging a more unified,
though still hybrid reality, wherein boundaries continue to collapse. This is the new prosthetic hybrid real:
physical yet still simulated, natural yet still constructed.
The performance passes through two seemingly opposite stages.
The first half of FEED.X – delivered in a traditional, frontal screening configuration - is misleading in relation to
later events. Amidst an ambient surround sound scape, the audience follows a camera moving through a 3D rendered
underground architecture, to eventually come about floating humanoid figures, weightlessly flying and floating like
a flock of birds on drugs, following what appears to be a semi-autonomous, semi conscious choreography. They race,
float and crash into one other in an erratic gravity shifting world, each giving off drone sound through- and while moving.
About 20 minutes into the show, similar still to the original FEED, the second part of the work transforms the venue into an
otherworldly amalgam of thick, artificial fog and intensely bright pulse- and strobe light. FEED.X points to the limits of
human perception, employing both sensory deprivation and sensory overload, to immerse its audience in a seemingly infinite,
kaleidoscopic space, a realm of pure light and sound. The work is often described as an unusually emotional and
sublimely mesmerizing experience.
A digital-analogue sound-scape, built from visual pattern - strobe to sound - feedback, combined with ample sub-bass,
heightens the loaded atmosphere.
Kurt Hentschlager always performs the second part live, intuitively controlling the flow of light and sound via physical
control interfaces.
Due to the phenomenological nature of the work, video documentation is not available. Available photos depict moments
from the first part and transfer into the second part only.
+reviews
+Playing
With Your Senses
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Visible Space Collapse digimag
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DeTelegraaf dutch
+Feed
Netmage06 Italian
+Feed Nim English
+Feed Nim Italian
+Mind
Altering Barton McLean
+Press-Reviews-ZEE+FEED_(large file)
+text
+FEED Text
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Claudia Hart essay engl
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Production Credits
© Kurt Hentschläger
© Photos: #1-4 - Bruno Klomfar
© Photos: #5 - Gridspace / Elektra XX
