Rain Dance

…from the IT jargon dictionary…

rain dance 1. Any type of activity aimed at sorting a hardware problem while expecting the effort to have no tangible effect.

2. Any sequence of mysterious actions exerted towards a computer in order to reach a certain aim. It usually consists of rituals, incantations, and similar psychical activities. Voodoo programming, black arts, cargo cult programming, waving with a dead chicken, and reading runes on printed circuit boards.

Self-appointed healers and menders resort to more and more bizarre acts. They confront the more and more intense emptiness with superficial rituals copied from National Geographic brochures and B movies. The machine goes on and on leaving no more traces of mystery. However, one always finds a moment to spend in the company of a nice song.

„Rain Dance shows, among other, how a commercial product often becomes “public property” and a cultural artefact onto which the consumer begins to project his intimacy: moods, memories, desires… and thus the product (in this case the song) becomes the biggest idiocy ever. A suggestion of a word, melody, rhythm is enough… and we are carried on a wave which describes a different curve for each surfer.“

Petr Ferenc: „In a Rain of Grilled Songs“, A2 cultural weekly 21/2009

„Rain dance works with oscillation between speech and demonstration. A deliberately non-theatrical manifestation is in direct contrast to the content of individual parts of the production, announced in advance. Even if this is itself often ironic, it declares great themes, which the performers purportedly want to touch on. Rain dance is an ironic play, which makes fun of the pompous, large gestures of theatre which pretends to be profound.“

Jan Jiřík: Small Inventory in Pigeon-Holes, SAD XXI/3 2010