Ghouls' Night Out presents Computing! And other modern perversions.

Event information

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On 1st June, Ghouls' Night Out presents an evening of comedy, film, live music and talks; all on the subject of 1980's technophobia. This technological unease touched on elements of obsession, dangerous sexuality, mind control and the loss of humanity.

As computers became ubiquitous in the cold, hard 80s, the fear arose that technology was developing too fast and computers might become too powerful - threatening to take over. As the 'greed is good' mentality took root and public life lost its humanity, human beings were being increasingly replaced in factories, offices and in the military. And as 1984 finally came around, the means to monitor and control the population - personal computers - were being eagerly taken in the home, like ants taking poisoned bait back to their nest.

Popular film saw an emergence of these fears: military computers threatening WW3 in War Games and The Terminator, and the latter film joined Blade Runner, Videodrome and Tron in depicting technology displacing humanity. There was cyberpunk movement in literature, the technological sheen of 80s pop music, and Star Wars made everything put a fucking robot in it...

Join occult comedian Andrew O'Neill as he hosts this Ghouls' Night Out with:

M!R!M: post punk songs of a personal hell fed on the subconscious, creating a doomed, vulgar, acid world with whispers that become screams and guitar effects blend with inner voices and synths. You might find traces of SUICIDE's frenzy, WIRE's straight forwardness and DNA's nihilism in the songs.

Simon Munnery performs mainly to an alternative audience but has pierced the mainstream both with his BBC Radio 1 show in 1997 and his BBC2 television series Attention Scum! in 2001. He once more stabs at the void between dead film and live theatre with excerpts from his latest fylm-tastic national tour. A show of clever, thrilling comedy and visual sketches: all performed by Simon, amongst the audience, and projected live on screen.

Space F!ght is an audio and visual live experience that explores the interaction between 3D projection mapping and improvised music. Drawing upon influences from a wide range of music styles, Space F!ght blends saxophone (James Mainwaring), percussion (Enrico Bertelli), guitar (Tom Adams) and electronic hardware (Radek Rudnicki) to create an unique and powerful sound, visualised through with custom made 3D projections (Jakub Hader). To create maximum multi-media impact, Space F!ght uses a custom made modular scenography for visualisations/3D mapping that reacts in real time to the improvised music.

Top 5 techno-fear movie scenes brought to you by film aficionado Justin Harries of FilmBar70 a regularly occurring film night at the Roxy in London Bridge. You may have guessed from the title that they're heavily '70s based, and you'd be right, though they have been known to make the occasional foray into the hinterlands of the '80s. Obsessed with style, ladies and excess, FilmBar70 chooses films that will appeal to the novice and experienced equally.

Stand By for Tape Back -Up: Writer Ross Sutherland takes old VHS tape from his loft and remixes the footage live onstage, transforming old movies and TV shows into a dialogue with his late grandfather.

Project 2 are a trio of part-cybernetic improv organisms grown in a test tube from clown DNA. They have 2 boy ones and 1 girl one. They'll take you to worlds beneath the skin of the 'verse and then maybe shrink to an atomic level and entertain your white blood cells. Improvised scenes from science-fiction masterworks that never were. WARNING: May contain robots*
* Will contain robots. Almost certainly.

Fancy dress encouraged. Inspiration ideas: replicants, cyborgs, Kraftwerk. Betamax monster, Cold wave/Goth, dystopia, screens, 1984

Go to www.facebook.com/GhoulsNightOutLondon for more details