DIGITAL CUCUMBER
Concept, Composer and Sound Design: Liv Runesdatter
Direction: Valentina Ceschi
Design: Kate Lane
Lighting design: Eric Bekkeheien
Cast: Liv Runesdatter, Richie Castro, Signe Irene Time, Ingrid Lode
Premiered: Tou Scene, Stavanger, Norway
October 2023
With support from Arts Council Norway
Digital Cucumber was a transmedia performance for young audiences, exploring how algorithm-driven ‘bubbles’ shape our perception of the world.
Aimed at the age when young people begin engaging with social media, the piece approached these complex ideas in a playful, non-moralising way. The narrative followed two computer scientists who, in attempting to solve world hunger, release an incomplete AI that generates a ‘digital cucumber’—a metaphor for algorithm-driven news feeds and, in Norwegian, news without substance. As the AI creates an economic and social bubble, the scientists must find their way back to each other and the physical world, reflecting on human connection in an age of invisible algorithms.
We developed Digital Cucumber through a design-led, visually driven devising process that explored the conversation between the physical and virtual. It was performed as a transmedia experience, moving between live and lens-based images to create a borderless space between tangible presence and the curated digital lens.
