Artefact

Theatre without humans?
Dialogue performed by machines?
Welcome to Artefact.

This show invites us, with headphones screwed on, into a wandering device that combines optical theatre, 3D printer technology and robotics.

Three installations reveal themselves to the visitor-spectator as facets of the same waking dream, inhabited by hallucinatory puppets. Synthetic voices, the comings and goings of 3D printers, a stream of images and the meticulous movements of a robot set designer make up the score. Echoing the current social debate, Artefact looks at the mechanisation of work and the degradation of our natural environment, and anticipates the hypothesis of the disappearance of humanity. Here, Joris Mathieu imagines a dialogue between a human and an artificial intelligence that feeds on and learns from humans.

It has a strong personality and a desire to act: alas, the man disappears, leaving the artificial intelligence nostalgic and alone with this task. By invoking Brecht and Shakespeare, Artefact turns theatre into a timeless window onto our irrepressible need to create.