Interrobang:
To Like Or Not To Like

Every movement in our digitized everyday life produces data. Far-reaching conclusions about human behaviour can be reached from analyzing these “data shadows”. Simply the evaluation of Facebook “likes” can allow very reliable conclusions about personal characteristics to be made, such as gender, age, ethnicity, relationship status, political orientation and much more. Algorithms are able to make precise predictions about future behavior from the growing total quantity of all data – big data. Big data knows more about you than you do yourself.

In To Like or Not To Like, big data becomes a participative theatrical game. With the help the audience and a computer program written specially for this very show, a data collection is created over the course of the performance that will be different each time: big data in a miniature format. - What does this “Little Big Data” tell us about ourselves? How much of my data existence corresponds to my own sense of self? Which information do I want “Little Big Data” to reveal? 

Interrobang stages an algorithmic trip into the realm in which control has been digitally lost. Curiosity, voyeurism, and narcissism of digital “like”-culture will be questioned as well as a society of the 21st century, which is just beginning to recognize the risks and opportunities of digitalization and how to deal with them.

BY AND WITH Till Müller-Klug, Lajos Talamonti, Nina Tecklenburg TELEPHONE INSTALLATION, DATABASE PROGRAMMING Georg Werner VIDEO DESIGN, PROGRAMMING Florian Fischer DRAMATURGY Kaja Jakstat STAGE, COSTUMES Sandra Fox MUSIC Joscha Eickel  COMPANY MANAGEMENT ehrliche arbeit – freies Kulturbüro LIGHT DESIGN Dirk Lutz TRANSLATION (ENGLISH VERSION) Daniel Brunet HOSPITANT Anja Schneidereit

Produced by Interrobang in co-production with Schauspiel Leipzig and SOPHIENSÆLE. Funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

Photos © Michael Bennett; Renata Chueire