Review of Cognition in City News!

25 Sep '08

A review by Helen Musa appears in the 24th September 2008 edition of City News. The relevant excerpt is here:

Hunting season 08, Belconnen Theatre, September 17-21.

Reviewed by Helen Musa

Devisers of “The Hunting Season”, a multi-faceted multi-media youth arts project, have threatened to “track down and murder the arts scenes of this city”. And sure enough, “Cognition: Part 1,” the first work in the project’s continuing theatre season, throws out a challenge to those of us living in the Brave New World.

A girl (Hannah Cormick) contemplates selling her soul on eBay. Instead, she puts her brain on the internet, deleting it the next morning, though all-too-aware that her innermost thoughts are now out there in cyberspace. A young man (Michael Ellis) addresses us directly. He loves us; he hates us. Then his deepest thoughts are interrupted by his mobile phone.

The girl scrapes her feet and rolls the dice as she tells us of three deaths caused by computers. The man moves in synergy with computer writing and live music on an upstage video screen. Clearly and cleanly, the seven talented creators of “Cognition: Part 1” delineate “the disquieting consequences for humanity” of new technologies. And the worst possibility of all? A supercomputer might delete all memory of us.

Read the full article here. Thanks for the great comments Helen!