As part of the Writer’s Mark Event, the K.A.F.K.A-TRON will be showcased alongside art inspired by Franz Kafka’s life and works. Created by Leah Georgiades (Heketrocera) and John Reddin (geekbiscuit), the “K.A.F.K.A-TRON: Kinetic Absurdist Fabric Kairotic Automatic” is a captivating portal, effortlessly merging real-life events with surreal dreamscapes that allegorically mirror human anxieties.
‘John has really been greasing the wheels on the electronic and programming front, I’ve seen him stuck in coding and soldering over the past few weeks to really bring the idea for the Kafka-Tron to life. He will be taking apart an old radio this week to act as a vessel for the electronics and we feel this is really going to bring a sense of fictional timelessness to the device. John was concerned about making a computer that looked out of time for Kafka, which really presented a challenge for us. So we’ve tried to conceive something that doesn’t seem recognisable. It will present scenarios to the user and give them seemingly pointless choices in what happens next. It’s somewhere between a choose your own adventure and a fortune teller. ’
The device challenges participants to confront the dichotomy between fact and nightmare, prompting them to question the very nature of reality. By selecting one of two options at each juncture, users actively shape their journey through a landscape where the boundaries between the tangible and the fantastical blur.
‘The device will give user’s the opportunity to experience a narrative that I’ve tailored to the life events of Kafka, told through text along with visual and audio experiences through the device. Writing the narrative has become a bit of a sleepless endeavour for me, but some realisations through research has really got the ball rolling. It was when I read an excerpt from A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil where the author explains Kafka’s use of ‘ironic dissimulation’. Kafka shows to us the sham of real life and how the repressed truth exists within fantasies. I’ve come to really see how Kafka was an admirer of poets such as Ovid and Baudelaire. I’ve drawn some comparisons between their uses of black humour and the Symboliste ideals of unleashing the truth of repressed dreams and abnormal realities.’
‘The narrative will take inspiration from events in Kafka’s life, these realistic scenarios that put the subject in a type of stasis because no logical solution is ever in sight. Only 2 benign choices are presented to the user, but they result in fantastical stories of transformation, like the Metamorphoses stories, that portray a deep seated, repressed truth that can hopefully be found in both the heart of Kafka & the participant themselves.’
Do you love making arbitrary decisions? K.A.F.K.A-TRON: Kinetic Absurdist Fabric Kairotic Automatic was made for just that.This interactive experience merges reality with surreal dreamscapes inspired by Franz Kafka’s works. Confront dichotomies, shape your narrative, and delve into the unsettling depths of Kafkaesque absurdity.
Leah Georgiades and John (geekbiscuit) have meticulously woven together elements of Kafka’s literary legacy and the bizarre, creating an experience that transcends the conventional boundaries of exhibition pieces. The K.A.F.K.A-TRON invites participants to grapple with the unsettling and the extraordinary, urging them to ponder which aspects of their own lives mirror the absurdity laid bare in Kafka’s works.