Chatbot Challenge
KI-Collage: Alexandre Silveira
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Chatbots are theatrical machines: they engage in lively dialogues, take on roles, and express and evoke emotions.
In CHATBOT CHALLENGE, two performers and a creative coder share the stage with chatbots and other AI systems. They explore the question: How much theater is in AI, and how much AI-theater have we already internalized? Starting from the core situation of theater – a live performance in front of an audience – the piece becomes an intimate encounter with global AI systems, their potential, and their strategies of deception. What happens when AI systems gain access to video, sound, stage, lighting, the bodies of the performers, and the reactions of the audience? Are chatbots the better performers? And how much work goes into their roles?
CHATBOT CHALLENGE explores the big societal questions and challenges brought about by the current rise of AI. It looks into the underlying systems that create AI, questioning how the profit-driven and often biased structures can be changed. How can we reveal and address the biases in AI systems? And how can AIs themselves contribute to answering these questions?
Gallery
Video
Press
“The festival “Spy on Me – Enter AI” begins with strong aesthetic statements and captivating visual worlds. It is still a very ambivalent game with a problematic technology. But here, art is doing what art should do. It shows how the digital world of AI functions and makes the first attempts to utilize it for theater. (…)
A true appearance of AI as a theatrical character is only seen in “Chatbot Challenge” by the group Interrobang. The performer lends her body to a chatbot, attempting to serve as a bridge for a physical presence that artificial intelligence doesn’t have. Hilarious effects emerge as the AI tries to find ways into human emotionality. For years, the performance group has been working with creative coders to make the pre-programmed algorithms and trained neural networks from California ready for artistic adventures, sometimes with startling results. Ethics filters are also the reason why the system doesn’t respond to all the commands given to it by the performer on stage throughout the evening. (…)
A highly complex computer process generates a video stream from the video images of the stage and the so-called “prompts,” or keywords. This stream aims to merge physical and virtual presence into a shared theatrical event.(…)
The idea behind trying to make theater with AI is quite simple. Machines simulate emotions, but it’s the audience that feels them. In acting, something similar often happens. Now, however, humans are interacting with machines in a way that will change themselves.”
(Eberhard Spreng, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 14.10.24)
“In the performance “Chatbot Challenge” by Interrobang, performers Christiane Kühl and Nina Tecklenburg share the stage with creative coder Manus Nijhoff. Kühl and Tecklenburg explore the theater space of the digital age with an AI. For much of the piece, the AI is represented by a colorful, moving soap bubble on the screen, speaking in a halting, emotionless voice, which makes it seem clearly inferior to the human performers. In one scene, Nina Tecklenburg lends her body to the AI, allowing it to participate in the performance as a physical entity.
Together, the performers and the AI embark on a journey, first into theater studies, exploring concepts such as co-presence and agency, and then behind the scenes of AI itself. To keep AI running, vast amounts of data are required, and to train these AIs, data must be collected and categorized by precariously employed clickworkers in low-wage sectors, upon whose labor part of the wealth of Western society relies. The journey finally ends in a distant future, where AI has far surpassed the human actors and wins all the Oscars.”
(Falk Lörcher, nachtkritik, 15.10.24)
Credits
Concept: Interrobang Play Devising: Christiane Kühl, Till Müller-Klug, Nina Tecklenburg and Team Performance: Christiane Kühl, Nina Tecklenburg, Artificial Intelligences Dramaturgy: Lea Goebel, Anna Krauß Collaboration Dramaturgy: Lara Domke Creative Coding: Manus Nijhoff, Florian Fischer Stage and Video: Theresa Reiwer Video: Alexandre Silveira Costume: Birke van Maartens Music: Friedrich Greiling Graphics: Jürgen Fehrmann, Julia Elger Technical Direction & Lighting Design: Dirk Lutz Production Management: ehrliche arbeit, Sandra Klöss Head of Communication: Alexandra Lauck Social Media: Selma Böhmelmann Public Relations: Tina Ebert.
Production: Interrobang. Co-production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Schlachthaus Theater Bern. Funded by Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt und durch Mittel des Hauptstadtkulturfonds.