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The basic narrative sees the two players seeking a new home after society has rendered their own world uninhabitable. Colonialism is rendered in digital terms as the pair – Si Rawlinson in the UK and Suen Nam in Hong Kong, also the work’s choreographers and dancers – dismiss the indigenous creatures as “glitches” in the programming. They proceed to transform and devastate the landscape.

A wealth of questions is raised about digital natives and the way our lives are already lived partly online, via mobile technology and social media. Which is more real now? When Rawlinson briefly removes his headset, he is described as “dreaming”. The nature of the staging also makes a compelling point about the way technology collapses distance.

Halfway through, talking heads – interviewees from Hong Kong and the UK, as well as countries like Ukraine and Iraq – appear on the screen. They paint a picture of the complex cross-currents of imperialism and emigration. Events in Hong Kong after the China handover are echoed by views on the UK’s own distortion of its damaging geopolitical legacy.

The plaintive singing of soprano Colette Wing Wing Lam and the jerky, spasmodic choreography of Rawlinson and Nam – like frame rates and pixels translated into dance – contribute to the show’s strange, hypnotic quality. And the game is often beautiful, conveying our relationship with our environment in a distinctive visual language.

But it is easier to admire this production than to feel truly immersed in it. The pacing veers too often from poetic to glacial, and there is a tension in the way that its many disparate elements seem to pull against each other. Even at 70 minutes, it can drag.