It’s the 22nd century, and humans are able to transfer their memories to an automatic operating system. The system can mimic human behavior, allowing human owners to complete unfulfilled aspirations after death.
This is all part of Code: Cytus (柯基托斯), a stage production inspired by a popular smartphone game.
Developed by Taiwan’s Rayark Games, Cytus was released for iOS in January 2012 and became the No. 1 music game at app stores in over 65 countries.
Photo courtesy of Divertimento Media
Gameplay calls for dexterous fingers. As dots flash to the beat of an instrumental track, the player taps them to score points and unlock new chapters in a story about Vanessa, a girl whose memories are transferred into a robot.
Onstage, Code: Cytus offers gameplay, too.
“The entire stage will be transformed into an arcade,” said director Chiu Yi-chun.
Photo courtesy of Divertimento Media
Twenty minutes before the show starts, the audience can configure their smartphones to a real-time game feed. Throughout the show, new challenges will appear on hanging screens, and gamers can compete in four teams for prizes, she said.
Meanwhile, a live band provides a propulsive backdrop, part original electro-pop and mostly video-game music.
“Eighty percent of the music is derived from the game [Cytus] — most of that has been adapted to fit the plot and to give the musicians a chance to show off their skills,” Chiu said.
Photo courtesy of Divertimento Media
MAN AND ROBOT
Code: Cytus is the latest creation by Divertimento Media (樂乎乎工作坊), a Taipei-based multimedia studio that Chiu co-founded in 2010.
It features a cast of musicians, actors, a DJ and dancers joined by floating black-and-white holograms generated by a 3D projector.
The stage production follows the misadventures of Operator No. 153, an automatic operating system tasked with fulfilling one dead woman’s last wishes, as it tries to complete its mandate and meets highly skeptical family and friends along the way.
According to the production notes, the question for the audience is whether a person’s memories and emotions can, when transferred into a robot, come out the other side as a successful human replica.
The audience is advised to arrive 20 minutes prior to opening for smartphone configuration and tours of pre-show exhibitions, which include a Cytus-themed art exhibition and a virtual reality room. The show is 60 minutes long without intermission.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless