I’d rather be an Iphone

– Part of the NODE17 Closing Evening

Can humanity hope for a better future, or is the game is already (almost) over?

Post-digital electronic music and performance project BBB_ rises the question with an outlook into the “future that already happened”. In their strange and mysterious world BBB_ creates various performances where digital technology is seen not a tool, but a phenomena that constructs social, emotional and irrational aspects of our lives today, and helps us to redefine relations between technological and natural worlds and a position and a role of a human and a humanity at large in it.

 

 
 

Their performance I’D RATHER BE AN IPHONE, along with their first music album release of the same name, is a play on the intersection of utopian and dystopian visions of the future that is already happening, it is a tale of partly-digitalised bodies, cyborgian-like species born to the world that had rapidly obtained a tremendous power of genesis, but is lacking a maturity to handle the complexity of the situation. In this conceptual multi-layered performance artists mediate their futuristic visions with electronic music, live-synthesized voice, emojis, visual poetry and their intense physical presence, with a theoretical approach towards trans-post-humanism, body enhancement, AI, biotechnology and robotics.

The title of the performance is taken from the statement “I’d rather be an iphone than a woman” by British theorist and feminist Helen Hester. “I’d rather be an iphone” is not only the title of the performance, but also of BBB_’s first music album. The album is accompanied by a booklet, containing a downloadable version of the album, as well as bonus tracks, videos, animations. With the Augmented Reality App “Aurasma”, the booklet can be brought to live.

Interactive light system by Karl Kliem.

 
 

Artists

 

BBB_

homepage-bbb.com

BBB_ is a post-digital cross disciplinary project, working at the interface of music, performance, art, design and philosophy. Behind BBB_ is the artist duo Alla Poppersoni and Alexander Sahm. Their work is a reflection of emotionality and irrationality in a world of global forces, Big Data and intelligent technologies. Poppersoni and Sahm present themselves as a mediator between digital and physical realities. While Poppersoni speaks conceptional lyrics in her own and synthesized computer voice, Sahm accompanies them with electronic Sound-Ready-Mades. The relinquishment of the stage transforms the performance into an intensive, club-like experience for the audience.