March 2024 Creative Development at Geelong Arts Centre, with Melinda Chapman, Jessica Lesosky, Sheshtin Honey, Julie Fryman, Susan Van den Ham, and Joshua Mitchell. Filmed by Eric Dittloff.
SWARM has been supported by Geelong Arts Centre's Creative Engine program, a Regional Arts Victoria Quick Response Grant, and a City of Greater Geelong Community Grant.
SWARM
A HYBRID CREATIVE TECH & LIVE PERFORMANCE WORK, IN DEVELOPMENT
CONCEPT​
Swarm is a hybrid live performance and augmented reality work that explores the potential impacts of AI and transhumanism on social dynamics. Satirical and speculative, the story portrays a growing division of learning and employment that reaches right into the sphere of an ordinarily conflicted, intergenerational family living in the near future.
Writer & Project Lead Melinda Chapman aims to take Big Tech's utopic visions and stress-test them against the industrial and social failings in our world today. Swarm asks, “What is the legal, social, and ideological track record of Big Tech, and what will happen when technology goes under the skin?"
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Swarm's creative team also comprises Jess Lesosky (movement director), Joshua Mitchell (creative technologist), and Sheshtin Honey (composer and sound).
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THEME
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Swarm explores the notion of ‘Big Other’ (—digital privacy rights activist Shoshana Zuboff). By expanding our reference from Brother to Other, Swarm aims to invoke questions surrounding our collective contribution to the dispossession of privacy, the dismantling of our shared reality, and our herding toward a technocratic society obsessed with market prediction, perception management, and behaviour gamification.
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PREMISE​
Swarm casts a lens into the lives of an extended family living in 2044. Incredible technologies promise infinite ways to connect and belong. Brain implants allow them to merge the physical world with digital augmentations. Mobile phones are of the past; people now access their inner-mind interface to send messages and telecommunicate. Cognitive enhancements offer superhuman abilities that create competitive advantages. Virtual worlds offer adventures, and the virtual property market is booming.
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The family already has an acutely unmet need for familial harmony and belonging. This starting point makes them vulnerable to utopic visions and ‘technologies as social saviours.’ The family may finally achieve a form of cohesion and belonging, but at what cost?​
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What could a further destabilised ‘shared reality’ feel like in future? How might society, industry—and self—be contributing to this destabilisation?
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While AI and neurotechnology will bring groundbreaking benefits, many sociologists and cultural theorists are concerned that tech such as non-therapeutic cognitive enhancements could exacerbate existing inequalities in employment, learning, and cultural participation. Swarm is a great vehicle to provoke much-needed questions, but it will also be a hybrid technology performance with on-stage Augmented Reality. As the characters descend into a world of mixed reality, the audience will too.
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PROJECT JOURNEY​
Swarm began as a seed project with the amazing support of Geelong Arts Centre's Creative Engine program, Regional Arts Victoria's Quick Response Grant, and a Performing Lines Victoria Artist Residency (delivered by Geelong Arts Centre).
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This support enabled mentoring sessions with Australian director Susie Dee as well as funding and venue space at GAC for a creative development in March 2024, which focused on experimental physical performance modes to explore hyperreal physical gesturing and vocal work. The outcomes of this movement intensive, along with ongoing technology consultation, has fed into the existing script in terms of how the characters interact with augmented objects and why. Additional mentoring was kindly provided by Creative Engine, with playwright and teaching artist Dan Giovanonni.
Many thanks to WRITHE collaborators Jess Lesosky, Joshua Mitchell, Sheshtin Honey, and session actors Julie Fryman and Susie Van den Ham.
Writer Melinda Chapman is currently developing the script in 2025, with mentorship from Melbourne-based writer, director and dramaturg, Amelia Chandos. Along with continued consultation with creative technologist Joshua Mitchell, this mentorship has developed through support from a City of Greater Geelong's 2024-25 Clever & Creative Seed Grant.
The Swarm team is grateful for project support from:
Creative Engine's Artist Residency program, delivered by Geelong Arts Centre & Performing Lines Victoria
Creative Engine's Ignition Grant, delivered by Geelong Arts Centre
RAV Quick Response Grant, delivered by Regional Arts Victoria
This project has been supported by a City of Greater Geelong Community Grant.
