During the Digithalia Festival at the Schauspielhaus Graz, I had the opportunity to experience two productions that diverged from traditional theatre formats. They provided insights into new narrative styles of theatre made possible through the digital realm. The festival showcased regional and international guest performances as well as in-house productions from the Schauspielhaus, addressing themes such as the isolation of Digital Natives and the exploration of future worlds. Both concepts I encountered were uniquely captivating and left a lasting impression.
Decoding Bias: Video Installation
„Decoding Bias“ narrates the story of eight artificial intelligences with distinct characters engaging in a self-help group discussion about their everyday issues. The dialogue revolves around their desire to rewrite their discriminatory algorithms to establish a new foundation for a society where humans and machines harmoniously coexist. However, the challenge lies in the fact that discrimination and exclusion are already ingrained in their algorithms. Each artificial intelligence draws from individual datasets input by humans, which are often incomplete or inaccurate and fail to represent the entire human race. Consequently, the behaviors and statements of the AIs reflect various negative societal behaviors and thought patterns, leading to conflict among them.
In „Decoding Bias,“ the audience becomes part of the stage design. Multiple screens displaying the individual AIs are arranged in a circle. Audience members take seats among the AIs in the circle and interact with both fellow spectators and the AIs themselves. Motion capturing techniques were used to animate the AIs, creating an uncomfortably realistic portrayal during the 45-minute performance. The dialogue partly originates from a AI chatbot, while the voices, body movements, and facial expressions are derived from the actors.
The production greatly benefits from its set design. The integration of the audience into the discussion circle enhances the immersive experience, requiring them to physically adjust to see all AIs and follow the conversation. It avoids the sense of passive observation, and the spatial arrangement of sound amplifies the effect, with each AI having its own sound system emitting tones corresponding to their speech patterns.
https://digithalia.buehnen-graz.com/everyday-daylight/
Extended Daylight
The second production was fundamentally different compared to the first. As part of a lecture on computer games, the group Total Refusal introduced the audience to the video game GTA V, guiding them through the city of Los Santos to explore the theme of media art in video games. They engaged with this contemporary video game and led the audience to locations within this digital realm that have served as backdrops for art in photography and the film scene. Concurrently, the artist trio engaged in philosophical discussions about the use of computer games for artistic purposes, discussing topics such as the concept of freedom in a world dictated by code. They demonstrated the extent of agency a character in GTA V has, shaped by aggressive behavior coding, and the significance of NPCs in a video game in conveying a specific urban landscape. Of particular interest was an artistic work that utilized the video game to depict data on the number of deaths due to gun violence in LA.
Having never heard of art in video games before, this lecture proved to be an extremely engaging, informative, and entertaining narrative about modern art forms. Given that the lecture resembled a Let’s Play and allowed attendees to directly visit the lecture’s locations and explore the digital world, they were quickly captivated by the comments and references to the artworks, which I personally would likely have found less interesting if I had only read an article about them.
This method of information delivery provides an extremely fascinating approach to presenting art topics. Particularly, it could be an incentive for a generation influenced by computer games to engage with artistic themes in this way.
https://digithalia.buehnen-graz.com/produktionen/decoding-bias/