Tender Engine
Tender Engine is a collaboration between choreographer Alexa Mardon, choreographer/set designer Erika Mitsuhashi, programmer Brynn McNab, a recursive neural network named UXIE, and performers Elissa Hanson and Zahra Shahab. Tender Engine is a group of female and nonbinary performers collaborating with An RNN which has learned to speak from the language the performers have spoken to it over two years of dances, stories, and conversations about where we are, and how we got here.
Tender Engine is a game show in which the rules are continually changing, a reality made and unmade in each moment, an invitation into a world both alienating and intimate.
This work was developed with the support of VIVO Media Arts Centre, Boca Del Lupo, Kinetic Studios, Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, and Plastic Orchid Factory.