by mike tyler

with frank sheppard	mike tyler electronics, bass
as Holoman	meindert meindertsma guitars
	peter kuitwaard percussion
frank van de ven	choreography
isabelle jenniches	animations, video

25 -27 may 1998 Theater de Balie Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Holoman; Digital Cadaver began as a collection of songs about a fictional character named J.P.Holoman whose life and death parallel that of real-life murderer J.P.Jernigan. Jernigan received the death penalty in Texas in 1993, but not before donating his body to science. The Visible Human Project was initiated by the National Library of Medicine as an information resource which would make possible highly detailed 3D navigation of the human body. After undergoing MRI scanning and computer tomography (CT) Jernigan's frozen body was sliced into thousands of paper thin sections and photographed. When digitally reassembled,
he became the 'universal human meat': his digitalization resulted in a bloodless, dissectible cadaver for anatomy students and perhaps the first immortal man, reborn in the ghost-like form of Holoman.

In Holoman; Digital Cadaver, the digital images of Jernigan's interior get confronted with the living body of actor Frank Sheppard. Sheppard 'embodies' the convicted criminal whose body was used to produce the digital images. It is evident throughTyler's lyrics that Jernigan's mind too has survived the ordeal. It speaks to us as disembodied psyche, trapped within the computer, reduced to digital information to be accessed by anyone anytime.

As Holoman, Frank Sheppard's speech and dance is unnerving, darkly funny, forcing jazzy rap into brooding soul rythms, and mixing up techie wise cracking with raw self-effacement.

performance in Amsterdam 1998

performance in Utrecht 1997