In a hybrid symposium on the topic of climate care, personalised artificial intelligences speak to their physically present guests: the audience. The new generation seizes the initiative as humanity fails in the face of the imminent climate catastrophe, and keeps on refusing to take urgently needed action.
The speakers address their guests directly in large-format videos projected onto screens distributed throughout the room. The AI initially appear as hyper-realistic, if not flawless, humanoid avatars that have chosen their specific appearance to emphasise their a????iliation with human society. In their introductory speeches, scientific discourses are interwoven with passages from podcasts, online columns, social media posts, pop star snippets and films with freely imagined texts generated by ChatGPT. The speeches pave the way for a visual journey that includes a virtual forest walk, a film noir-inspired car journey and a psychedelic-transformative experience. Reiwer's production is designed to be interactive and immersive. In question-and-answer situations, the audience can communicate personal wishes or connect with the constantly changing, new AI characters in interactive visuals. While media critics such as Guy Debord, James Bridle, Samira El Ouassil and Byung-Chul Han have their say on the meta-level, the production presents itself at the cutting edge of technology and design, and plays with virtual worlds in an iconic way.
In the face of a seemingly unstoppable, progressive and aggresive capitalism with its powerful consumer logic and climate-damaging optimisation narratives, LASTING GENERATION uses the means of art and theatre to pose the question: What new and empowering narratives can we create to counter the apocalyptic scenarios that paralyse us all?
Reiwer and her team understand AI as a resonance chamber for existing and utopian social systems. Their new work can also be understood as a thought experiment: What could a society based on co- existence with artificial intelligence look like? Can the new entity inspire humanity? With LASTING GENERATION, they build on their internationally successful work DECODING BIAS (2023), which was presented at renowned festivals: A group therapy for eight AI who wanted to overcome their discriminatory prejudices. While AI functioned there as a mirror for (white) male developers, it has now emancipated itself from its data providing fathers.
Dates and times:
Octobre11,12&13at4:00pm/5:30pm/9:00pm
HAU
Berlin