Isolation is toxic. It robs us of our tether to the past, our dreams for the future, our connection to the present moment, and to each other. Humans deserve connection. When we feel belonging and community, we are motivated to become our best selves. preform.IO is committed to creating art and interfaces that are emotionally accessible and offer belonging in an increasingly alienated world.

Humans are made to move. We are dynamic creatures that learn through our hands and feet just as much as we do through our eyes and ears. We all deserve to experience the life lessons that can only come through our bodies — diving headfirst into cool water, spinning and stomping to music, pressing our fingers into clay to create something new. Without the freedom to be embodied, we become rigid, muted, and powerless. Kinetic interaction doesn’t just transform our thoughts; it transforms our way of being in the world, making us more resilient and more capable of growth.

In this golden age of computation, the body has become more easily sampled, compressed, and dismissed. Our work instead enables a dialogue between our bodies and the digital interfaces with which they interact. We ask questions about the affordances of augmented intelligence: What kind of virtual spaces help us be more rooted here and now? What control do we exert over our interfaces — and what influences do they have on us? How can we create technologies that reach across divides and shake us from our numbness? By bringing nuance, dynamism, and embodiment to our innovations, we bring artists’ visions to life and strengthen our shared humanity.

We believe that each person has a unique, magical potential. Too often, unrelatable and inauthentic experiences diminish people’s dreams for themselves, rather than expanding their possibilities. Our partnerships challenge that narrative. We consider every aspect of a performance — the characters represented, the interfaces employed, the social and political context — in terms of audience impact. We aim not just to entertain, but to feed and awaken the humanity in each of us.

The performing arts have generated immeasurable positive impact for individuals and societies. Yet, much remains to be transformed; there are ruts to break out of, habits to reexamine, and walls to breach if we hope to reverse the trend of dwindling participation in performing arts. We need to create art that speaks to, well, everyone. preform.IO plays at the intersection of augmented intelligence and expressive movement because we believe this is where new audiences live. This is where untold stories will be brought to light and new creative visions will be pulled into reality. We transcend the fifth wall to transform human experience and to feed our souls.