The Impossibility of Invisibility

 Transdisciplinary theatrical music performance on/with WiFi sensing

Ready for a world where your router knows more about you than your therapist?

What if your every movement, your every action, even in your home, was monitored by an invisible sensing grid? Would you behave, or would you revolt?

The Impossibility of Invisibility is a provocative, radical performance about a surveillance revolution quietly brewing in research labs and corporate board rooms: Ubiquitous WiFi signals are being weaponized into stealthy human radars harvesting data on every aspect of our lives – no device required, no consent asked, no opt-outs possible. Because our bodies are mostly water, they naturally disrupt the signals emitted by our devices, revealing information on our movements, behaviours, social lives, vital signals, even emotions. Our addiction to limitless connectivity and convenient smart appliances is being exploited to covertly advance sinister agendas, rendering privacy obsolete and freedom a luxury of the past.

Merging music, movement, theater, and bleeding-edge WiFi sensing technology, this sci-fi inspired transdisciplinary work empowers audiences to experience – and prepare against – an imminent future that may soon fall upon us. In doing so, it challenges the myth of innovation as progress, lays bare its deeply political nature, and probes its ethical voids and blind spots. Through a kaleidoscopic blend of evocative storytelling, dry information, and sensory immersion, the work oscillates between utopian, dystopian, and realist scenarios. Three performers shift fluidly across time, space, and personas to inhabit a variety of situations. The work weaves together past, present, and speculative futures to explore notions of hope and hopelessness, expectation, revelation, transformation, and empowerment.

The Impossibility of Invisibility is a warning call, a subversion manual, and an invitation to imagine our future before it’s written for us, without us.

The project deploys bleeding-edge WiFi sensing technology, developed by project lead Stelios Manousakis, to critically imagine and embody worlds where its applications are a fact of life. What can these technologies do, and more importantly, who can they do it to, who can they do it for, and how will they change us in the process?

Concept & composition: Stelios Manousakis
Direction : Lisenka Heijboer Castañón & Peter Leung
Created by : Stelios Manousakis, Lisenka Heijboer Castañón, Peter Leung, Stephanie Pan, Paolo Yao
Sensing technology, interaction design, programming : Stelios Manousakis
Performers : Stelios Manousakis, Stephanie Pan, Paolo Yao
Lighting design : Pavla Beranová
Set design : Stelios Manousakis & Lisenka Heijboer Castañón
Costumes : Stephanie Pan
Production : Stichting Modulus

• Previous Instruments of convenience / Instruments of surveillance