A Futuristic Experiment

This was a strange trip to Shoreditch Town Hall, as the piece was part of Future Fest. A festival which imagined what the future might be like.. Interactive sculptures, sound cancelling head phones and lego models apparently. I have since watched the videos of the other folk that landed on my number, once was a 16 year old aspiring dancer, and other a fairly opinionated French lady. Not sure if I felt an instant connection with either.. 

In a basement in Shoreditch, a voice booms through my headphones instructing me to enter an unknown room. I am about to partake in Non Zero One’s interactive piece: Hold Hands/Lock Horns (Future Edition). Knowing little about the installation, other than the fact it is a one-on-one experience, I’m fairly intrigued to discover exactly what it will entail. I enter a dark room with a large forked grid taped on the floor. The interviewer explains I will be asked to choose between a series of options that will ultimately lead me to a number between 1-64. As I’m asked to decide between ‘power of flight’ or ‘invisibility cloak’ – the whole experience begins to feel a lot like a giant game of ‘Would you rather?’ 

The questions don’t appear to be linked in any way; I found that some of my responses were more instinctive whereas others I spent longer mulling over. My last choice between ‘truth’ or ‘lie’ causes me to land on number 27. I am then lead into a separate room and asked to explain the rationale (if any) behind my choices. As I leave I’m informed that the probability of the next person choosing exactly the same sequence and also ending up on 27 is highly unlikely – statistically speaking, roughly 1 in 4,000. 

In a couple of weeks, I will receive an email from the team behind Non Zero One which will contain a link allowing me to see videos of the other participants who also inadvertently ended up on the same number. I think it will be quite interesting to hear the way in each my fellow 27-ers interpreted the questions and the thought process behind their responses.The act of watching the others being interviewed transforms my personal experience into a shared and collective experience. 

Hold Hands/Lock Horns (Future Edition) was being performed as part of this years FutureFest – a two-day festival which imagined what our future might be like. Given the wider context of the event, I do think that questions asked during the piece could have been more daring and perhaps had a futuristic feel about them. That said, I think their overall concept of forcing members of the public to make on-the-spot decisions is simple but ultimately could prove to be quite revealing. Non Zero One is a young company whose experimental performance art shows much promise.