The Mechromancer’s Memo for the Forgotten Millennium 宗周异闻录
The Mechromancer’s Memo for the Forgotten Millennium is a piece of promenade immersive theatre. It premiered in the Gao’s Garden in a 4A-level scenery area, Xixi Wetland of Hangzhou. Audience followed the plot of the play while immersed in a traditional Chinese-style garden under the quiet night sky.
The play was created inspired by two text from the west and the east: Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and Lie Zi’s prose in Tang Wen, which documented the earliest figure of Artificial Intelligence in China. It surrounds the theme of the creator and the created.
Plot Summary
Yan Shi is a gifted mechanist in the dynasty of West Zhou (around 1000BC). He spent all his life creating a wooden robot. After he created the wooden robot, he presented it as a gift to the emperor and was given a high title in govenment. Meanwhile, the wooden robot was abandoned after its “heart” was taken out by the emperor. The robot, however, gained energy sources from the nature and became wild beings and becomes a nightmare of Yanshi’s.
