3:00pm-5:00pm on Saturday 16 March
Times shown are in GMT (UTC +0) up to the 26th March. For events on or after 27th March times are in BST (UTC +1).
Cambridge Central Library, 7 Lion Yard, CB2 3QD
Technology offers us the world – but what does it take away? What is the bargain here? The Faust Shop, an augmented theatrical experience embedded in a lab environment, asks these and related questions. Faust Shop 2.0 adapts Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s version of the Faust legend to the digital age. It focuses on the homunculus – an artificial, multi-dimensional human created by collective AI.
On stepping into this pop-up shop, you’ll be immersed in a short story that blurs the boundary between the virtual and physical space. The Faust Shop is a mixed-reality experience that explores the Faustian pacts we make with digital tech. And before visitors leave, it will ask them if they want to reclaim their digital soul.
The Faust Shop performance is a performance as research (PaR) project led by Dr Annja Neumann and Alex Mentzel. It is part of Neumann’s Re-staging Public Spaces project, funded by Cambridge Digital Humanities and the Isaac Newton Trust, and of Mentzel’s PhD project on digital topographies, funded by a Gates Cambridge Scholarship.
The performance will be complemented by a talk on anti-computing and digital futures by Professor Caroline Bassett.
Recommended for adults and children aged 8+ years.
For further details on previous iterations of the Faust Shop production, see the press release on the University’s website at: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/cambridge-pop-up-experience-explores...
Or watch the trailer at: https://www.tiktok.com/@cambridgeuniversity/video/7109505500160494853?is...
