Tash and Flo have a distinct segment enterprise: they supply superstar video messages and endorsements for keen consumers. Of course, no celebrities are literally concerned. Flo (Grace de Souza) reads the messages to a digital camera, whereas Tash (Annabel Ekue-Baptist) makes use of deep pretend AI to superimpose the superstar’s face onto Flo’s head, the end result projected onto a white display behind the stage. The second when Flo’s face is out of the blue changed by that of the Queen, in actual time, is each humorous and disturbing. “Why do people want messages from dead people?” Flo asks. Tash merely shrugs. “We get…
Rating
Good
An intriguing dip into the world of deep fakes, utilizing cutting-edge know-how to govern stay motion.
Tash and Flo have a distinct segment enterprise: they supply superstar video messages and endorsements for keen consumers. Of course, no celebrities are literally concerned. Flo (Grace de Souza) reads the messages to a digital camera, whereas Tash (Annabel Ekue-Baptist) makes use of deep pretend AI to superimpose the superstar’s face onto Flo’s head, the end result projected onto a white display behind the stage. The second when Flo’s face is out of the blue changed by that of the Queen, in actual time, is each humorous and disturbing. “Why do people want messages from dead people?” Flo asks. Tash merely shrugs. “We get requests for Marilyn Monroe all the time.”
The pair put together for his or her subsequent superstar pretend: Bridport Women’s Football Club have requested a message from Keira Knightley in her Bend It Like Beckham days to gee up their captain. But then Alfie (Henry Waddon) rolls up. An old-fashioned good friend of Tash, he’s each intrigued and vaguely perturbed by the method. “We only fake celebrities, not real people,” Tash explains. “Their faces are in the public domain.” But it’s a lie: the messages aren’t actual, the individuals aren’t actual. How can this be legit? Flo has a pat reply: the extra standard their service turns into, the much less individuals will consider what they see on the web.
Alfie is one thing of a drifter, making use of for uni however with no concrete plans. But he has a secret obsession: and when he asks Flo to “become” that obsession, her face captured from a snap on his cellphone, she has second ideas. Is this too intrusive? Is it psychologically wholesome? Or is it only a little bit of enjoyable?
Written and directed by Gabe Winsor, and devised by the solid, Sockpuppet elegantly captures the zeitgeist with its slick video seize know-how and gradual plot growth. Curious interludes function a fourth character, performed by Georgie Dettmer, who doesn’t converse however as an alternative movies close-ups of her fingers trickling sand onto the stage.
The solid all have a credit score as devisers of the play, and this does lead to a considerably disparate message. The function of the sand trickler is obscure, a metaphor that doesn’t fairly hit the mark. The motion is oddly staged, with a hefty cable from the digital camera snaking throughout the stage earlier than disappearing up into the lighting rig.
Sockpuppet raises many questions – who owns their picture? How a lot ought to we belief what we see on-line? To what extent ought to we enable ourselves to indulge our fantasies? The present could not reply many of those questions, however it’ll definitely go away you pondering.
Directed by: Gabe Winsor
Produced by: Buzzcut Productions
The present has now ended its run.