Decoding it the hard way

Choreography & performance
Lea Karnutsch

Object, music & performance
Ferdinand Doblhammer

Info
Multidisciplinary performance
 30 minutes
2022

Description
‚Decoding it the hard way‘ is a performance that describes the interaction with an encrypted network. Two server racks, wired to each other with 96 network cables symbolize its revealed connections. The entangled performers try to decrypt the black box with brute force.

Showings
Dock 11 Berlin – Humandroid Festival as part of the exhibtion "The Sensation of Biting Into a Peach And Letting The Juice Run Down Your Chin" 24.09.2022

Angewandte Performance Lab Vienna – Angewandte Festival 01.07.2022

©Verena Tscherner

Decoding it the hard way
Encrypted and invisible data is distributed in networks of all kinds. In their undecipherable form they exist in close proximity, ready to be touched and worked with. But the manual search after a data string with meaning seems to be impossible at first glance. The only way to find something of significance is with a lot of endurance and/or sheer brute force.

Two server racks are placed on stage, which are connected with 96 ethernet cables. These racks symbolize the hidden processes inherit to every network – the cables strained between the towers make an alteration and perception of the data possible. The performer is thrown into this system and tries to decrypt as much as possible for herself (and the audience). Each pull on a cable is measured live, translated into data and alters the sound.

Every cable is directly connected to sound parameters. Each will react differently on every touch. In the only way to interact, make sense and decypher the system, she tries to cause visual and audible disruptions by pulling, straining, punching and throwing the cables.

This seemingly uncovers the Black Box, but in the process of doing so, the foreign body more and more becomes part of the system itself and drowns in the connections.

The music was exclusively written by Ferdinand Doblhammer for the piece and is performed live while the straining and pulling alters and distorts the sound in its texture and rhythmic properties. After intensive confrontation with the object and instrument, Lea Karnutsch exclusively created a choreography for the piece.