A digital / real world performance narrative as presented by
Team Rolfes (Nyc, USA), Starring Ninajirachi (Naarm)
+ PASSAGE_MXG
An soundscape performance trapped in outer space from
CAPITAL WASTE X QUARTZ PISTOL X MICHAEL ELLINGFORD
Team Rolfes: 321 Rule
This groundbreaking show is the result of years of pioneering 3D live performance, featuring collaborations with artists like Danny L Harle, Rabit, House of Kenzo, Lady Gaga, Arca, and Marshstepper. Written by spam-poet Jacob Bakkila (horse_ebooks, Bear Stearns Bravo), 321Rule stars a rotating cast of musicians as Eris Wonderful, a memory hunter gig worker navigating a twisted, near-future metaverse.
The live stage adaptation is a wild audiovisual mashup: real-time 3D avatar theatre meets metaverse-parody games, set to a high-BPM soundtrack where each guest star’s iconic songs blend seamlessly into an original score by Galen Tipton & Count Baldor. It’s half sardonic digital slapstick, half hyperpop scream ballad.
No two shows are the same. 321Rule constantly evolves, with new musical collaborators keeping each performance fresh and unpredictable.
For its Adelaide debut, Team Rolfes teams up with Naarm-based musician and producer Ninajirachi. Together, they explore a chaotic future where human memories are mined like video game levels, unlocking hidden pasts to create new futures—at a steep price.
Team Rolfes are renowned worldwide for redefining virtual performance, using real-time animation, VR puppets, and motion-capture avatars to craft viscerally intense, boundary-pushing experiences. Founders Sam and Andy Rolfes have worked with Lady Gaga, Metallica, Amnesia Scanner, Nike, and Adult Swim, dazzling audiences at festivals across the globe.
Ninajirachi, meanwhile, has been turning heads with her 2024 album, Girl EDM. Her signature blend of hyperpop and EDM is a high-energy musical pastiche that perfectly complements Team Rolfes’ dense and eclectic visuals.
Kevin Peter He: Passage_MXG
New York based artist and live cinema director Kevin Peter He presents a new version of his audiovisual show Passage, collaborating with Adelaide based Messianic Gloss.
“Passage” is a speculative, narrative-driven audiovisual performance unfolding live in a game engine. Set in a cybernetic forest, it reveals a self-sustaining ecosystem where organic life merges with computational circuitry, creating an otherworldly symbiosis. Inspired by parallels between natural ecosystems and computer networks, it imagines a new, artificial nature born from machine intelligence. It asks, “What would nature look and sound like if born from a computer?”
The story unfolds through environmental storytelling, shaped in real-time by visual and audio performers using custom MIDI controllers to manipulate the camera’s gaze, lighting, and interactions within micro-biomes. Each performance evolves uniquely, as performers improvise with the dynamic environment, fostering emergent behaviors and crafting a narrative that transforms with each moment.
CAPITAL WASTE X QUARTZ PISTOL X MICHAEL ELLINGFORD
presents ://INITIALIZE_BEACON
An improvised, ambient audio visual exploration into deep space in search of a mysterious distress beacon light years away.
://INITIALIZE_BEACON is the live interrogation of a rogue space group? receiving a faint emergency beacon signal from a distant galaxy. Following the blips on their monitor, the signal gets louder and eventually they are able to triangulate its location from the fragmented and garbled audio recordings. They travel through wormholes, blackholes, fluid galaxies, bending time, space and reality as they follow the rhythmic sonar blips calling out to them like a siren. As they approach, the signal becomes clearer and the glitched sounds are revealed to be audio recordings from someone, but who…..?
The work examines themes of self, social responsibility, humanity, posthumanism, space colonisation, mental health and isolation. This live performance is the first small step of exploration into a larger body of work that explores similar themes.
Visually the work will be made using real-time 3D animation through Unreal Engine, interactive user interfaces with TouchDesigner and analog video glitch with obsolete video hardware. Sonically Quartz Pistol will perform live vocals with loops and vocal manipulation while Michael Ellingford lays the foundations of the work with virtual eurorack cockpit sounds and space ambience utilising hardware audio sequencers.
TICKETS
Early Bird: $25 +bf
General Release : $35 +bf
Door Price: $50 (until sold out)
WARNING: Strobe lighting and other intense lighting may be used during this show. It may not be safe for those with epilepsy and other conditions with sensitivity to light.
