Brain Dance

An art installation by Romain Tardy
Music by Ofer Smilansky

Production: Fête des lumières de Lyon , LDA Productions
Place Louis Pradel, Lyon, France, December 2024

Brain Dance is a spectacular and original new artistic installation that fuses festive aesthetics, critical reflection, and absurd humor. Situated at the crossroads of giant puppet theater and audiovisual performance, it offers a luminous, kinetic, and sonic experience of grand scale.

The installation consists of eight customized "air dancer" puppets—those inflatable figures, standing between six and eight meters tall, that undulate in the wind. Each puppet stylizes one of the emblematic leaders of the world's largest tech companies—including the GAFAM giants: Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Arranged in two rows on platforms, they are framed by a lighting and sound system that evolves in rhythm with an energetic musical score. 

The humorous and somewhat surreal tone of the installation does not prevent it from delivering a sharp critique of these tech industry moguls. By reducing them to animated puppets, Brain Dance suggests that, just like their inflatable effigies, these powerful figures are subject to the unpredictable forces of history and society.