transmediale and CTM Festival have commissioned a special piece by critical futurist, composer, and conceptual artist James Ferraro. Plague is an ambitious audiovisual stage performance and the first of its kind for Ferraro—transmediale is proud to host the world premiere at the 2018 festival edition. The work includes choral compositions, live visuals by Nate Boyce, and scenographic elements. It is built around speculations on a future society in which a deranged AI is simulating reality through the manipulation of living humans, with the goal of creating the ultimate consumer product. As the AI struggles to emulate what it means to be human, tensions arise between the clinical gaze of the machine and the imperfection of its emulation.

The performance is not included in transmediale Passes, transmediale Day Passes, and transmediale + CTM Connect Passes, with the exception of the transmediale + CTM Connect Gold Pass. Buy your tickets here!

Plague is a joint commission with Abandon Normal Devices festival within the ongoing Creative Europe network The New Networked Normal (NNN).