MEINHARDT & KRAUSS

Three dancers meet automata, robots and animated body parts and encounter the artificial intelligence ToMoMi. A code and electricity bring the machine-objects to life. They are not human, not animal, but also no longer pure objects,
they have a presence, a magic. The self-created creatures become mirrors of ourselves and point to our own vulnerability and mortality. While the players slowly become cyborgs and objects themselves through sensors and technology, the machines increasingly begin to develop human characteristics and feelings. Objects, programming and performers merge in the staging to create extraordinary puppet theater in which the boundaries between man, machine and object seem to be completely blurred. Between artificial intelligence / uncanny valley / controller boards and programming codes on the edge of what is technically feasible, a surreal machine dream emerges. 


MEINHARDT & KRAUSS have been puppeteer/director Iris Meinhardt, video artist Michael Krauss and composer Thorsten Meinhardt since 2003. The Stuttgart-based pieces thrive on the intensive exchange between puppet theater, film, new media and contemporary music. They skillfully merge high-tech and poetry, virtuality and the body into their own theater language, which invites with a vital sense of the surreal to perceive the apparently unreal.