HAMLETMACHINE treatment 2016 by Birgitte Moos Chalcraft

I am working on producing a new interpretation of the Hamletmachine, which is exciting right now, where posthumanism and artificial intelligence are being debated and applied. Since 1998, concepts such as transhumanism, posthumanism, and the holographic worldview have been formulated. And digital environments have slowly infiltrated every aspect of our lives. Humanity is extremely influenced by science and technology, and contemporary theatre responds to realities where concepts such as cyborgs and virtual reality become reality. VR glasses and virtual reality games open the gate into parallel universes while we are in our own, identifiable bodies. We have entered an era of new forms of existence and interaction, and changes that will provoke deeply rooted ideas derived from the humanities and ancient cultural material that has taught us about humanistic values.

We currently operate as fluid nomadic identities, in a hyper globalized world that branches out in different directions; neural structures with trends and patterns in cross-sectional through Western cultures - where myths that lie beneath the surface contain structural patterns in society's communication networks.

I see the Hamletmachine as a magnificent story about the maintenance of university and life, and I also designed the Hamletmachine from that angle in 1998.

Here in 2016, I am working on Hamlet_ex_tender; a meta-interpretation of the Hamletmachine, which is based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Here, I am planning an enlightening, multifaceted post-internet Hamlet_ex_tender production that joins 'images' from Western technologized society with versions of new science and humanistic developments in a holistic direction, with certain patterns - in order to counteract the dystopia of the mental and climatic death predicted by the Hamletmachine´s script. The intention is to make it shine through the work that an underlying human warmth and morality still prevails over the notion of posthumanist alienation.

And I imagine a kaleidoscopic universe in a holographic, multi-dimensional Hamlet_ex_tender performance that, through interdisciplinary scenography, communicates, for example, patterns that revolve together and versions of certain patterns in a cross-section through historical epochs as a transition to new patterns in aggregate form in a future worldview. In a way where matrix patterns that are formed in infinite cycles create patterns of infinite comfort zones. Pattern recognition in relation to a cross-cultural, multi-ethnic new Europe, where spirituality and technology, body, psyche and consumer society unite.

I see sustainability as a natural consequence of a holistic worldview! And the Hamletmachine is based on and intertwines different theories and ideologies. In Hamlet_ex_tender, I explore the fields of synthetic biology, philosophical existentialism, mythological anthropology, language, and communication, politics, ethics, patterns, quantum physics, and cosmology, where my intention is to tie complexity together in an artistic expression that is about the development of consciousness towards sustainable thought and behavior.

To understand where this reinterpretation navigates from, a description of the 1998 Hamletmachine version will hopefully set the course: Hamletmachine portrays failed revolutions and aims to support social change while facing the effects of consumerist culture. Hamlet is placed in a split that spans between Ice Age and overheating due to climate change as result of mankind's consumerism and transcending capitalism'. In only eight pages Hamlet is fragmented within history; politics and humanism, carrying disillusioned ideals from a past of violence and failed revolutions’.

With the human being at the center in a new Hamletmachine interpretation, I have chosen basic themes such as human nature and essence. What the meaning of life and the creation of this universe is. On social media such as Facebook, videos about factory farming, animal memory and loyalties across species go viral. And it is as if we are in a new, and extremely necessary, expansive time of consciousness, with a kind of mass awakening, precisely here where climate change is what humanity must first look at and act on.

The vision is to produce a 4D holographic and interactive Hamletmachine named Hamlet_ex_Tender. In other words, that it is performed in 4D holograms, where holographic scenography must be realized based on quantum physics' double split experiment and theories of parallel universes and evidence for gravitational waves. Prismatic space geometry, whatever that is.

The main starting point is thus gravitational waves, and the quantum physics Double Split experiment, which measures how individual electrons are simultaneously everywhere and becomes a wave of potentials, where an Interference pattern occurs. A recording of gravitational waves in 2016 shows that these waves are triggered and created by colossal events in the universe such as the collision of black holes and the Big Bang. I see these scientific discoveries as groundbreaking for human consciousness development, and expansion of such.

I assume that we all possess a basic human essence that evens out established differences. An essence that is not dependent on the notion of immortality and bodily perfection. In the whole question of the prolongation of life, one must consider what it is that improves man. It has something to do with moral choice and the possibility of free will, and the ability to act as a moral being, and emotional reactions that help define us as human beings.

Art is concerned with virtual reality. Artists, as far as is known, have always been 'concerned with the nature of reality'. This can be seen in Picasso's cubist portraits, in 'D.H Kahnweiler’ work from 1910 and in Cezanne's 'Geometry in nature' paintings, and by Victor Vasarely, the father of Op-Art.Science fiction has been describing the fourth dimension since 1926, but it is still difficult to imagine a world our eyes and senses do not have access to. The world of consciousness, the universe, outside the physical body is a new frontier for science. Einstein explored the meeting between science and what some would call spirituality. With the new discoveries of quantum physics, that world can be shown, and therefore possibly recognized as existing.

Prior to working with Hamletmachine, for the performance Corpus in C at Arthall Charlottenborg in 1991, I formulated the term 'Synthetic Realism' as a descriptive synthesis for my lifelong interest in "what is real! What is reality and what is really the meaning of life, merged with adaption of tech-consumerism into existence for alive organisms and use of synthetic materials, plus overuse in terms of consumerism and the structure of capitalism.