Commissioned by Ensemble l’Imaginaire and Festival Musica
Premiered in Strasbourg, October 2nd 2020, The second version was premiered on November 24th 2021

Toxic Box was conceived as a mirror of one of my previous hybrid performances The Love Letters?. While in The Love Letters? the main vehicle for emotions are the faces of the performers, in Toxic Box the human face has been completely dematerialised, replaced for its 3D model.

The avatars (result from the scanning of the real performers), projected behind the musicians on a huge screen, obbey to animation commands triggered by the attacks of a keyboard sampler. Human expressions try to emerge creating an absurd face choreography. These dance is progressively deconstructed by objects smashing the faces. Is our hyper-consumerism burying us?

This piece follows the line of my late work that stages the fragility of our contemporary society in face of technology, often represented by the screen.

Daniel Zea