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AI on Stage: A Cross-Cultural Check-Up and the Case of Canada and John Mighton

  • Piet Defraeye
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Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement
This chapter is in the book Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence and the live actor on stage seem like two antagonistic concepts: binary animatronics versus an explicitly alive three-dimensional world. While theatre production itself often relies on AI-driven technology, the stage largely remains a Sacred Space. Yet, much of the vocabulary and paradigms that define AI have been informed by stage practice. From the early days of popular science theatrics over Karel Čapek′s R.U.R. to Alan Turing’s Imitation Game, there are traces of permutative referencing between AI and live theatre. More recently, AI has become a major motif in live performance, often combining digital technology with analogue dramaturgy. The University of Toronto’s BMO Lab is a flag bearer in creative and critical research on how and what AI means for the stage. Canadian theatre producers like Robert Lepage’s Ex Machina and Canadian playwright John Mighton are prominent examples of engagement with AI on the Canadian stage. Mighton ’s play Possible Worlds (1990) and Robert Lepages’s eponymous film adaptation (2000) is a murder mystery that focuses on a series of crimes in which the brains of several victims are stolen. We face a cyborgian world in which individuality is constructed through an affective triangular dynamic between sexual desire, technological developments and economical- financial interests. Both film and play explore how narratives are metonymic figurations for the endless possibilities that both the brain and AI can produce.

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence and the live actor on stage seem like two antagonistic concepts: binary animatronics versus an explicitly alive three-dimensional world. While theatre production itself often relies on AI-driven technology, the stage largely remains a Sacred Space. Yet, much of the vocabulary and paradigms that define AI have been informed by stage practice. From the early days of popular science theatrics over Karel Čapek′s R.U.R. to Alan Turing’s Imitation Game, there are traces of permutative referencing between AI and live theatre. More recently, AI has become a major motif in live performance, often combining digital technology with analogue dramaturgy. The University of Toronto’s BMO Lab is a flag bearer in creative and critical research on how and what AI means for the stage. Canadian theatre producers like Robert Lepage’s Ex Machina and Canadian playwright John Mighton are prominent examples of engagement with AI on the Canadian stage. Mighton ’s play Possible Worlds (1990) and Robert Lepages’s eponymous film adaptation (2000) is a murder mystery that focuses on a series of crimes in which the brains of several victims are stolen. We face a cyborgian world in which individuality is constructed through an affective triangular dynamic between sexual desire, technological developments and economical- financial interests. Both film and play explore how narratives are metonymic figurations for the endless possibilities that both the brain and AI can produce.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Acknowledgements VII
  4. Introduction: Affirmative and Critical Approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement 1
  5. Part 1: Challenging “Strong AI” from the Perspective of Human Agency
  6. The Artificiality of the Human Mind: A Reflection on Natural and Artificial Intelligence 17
  7. Merits and Limits of AI: Philosophical Reflections on the Difference between Instrumental Rationality and Praxis-Related Hermeneutical Reason 33
  8. Experience, Identity and Moral Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 51
  9. Outsourcing the Brain, Optimizing the Body: Retrotopian Projections of the Human Subject 79
  10. Life Care/Lebenssorge and the Fourth Industrial Revolution 101
  11. Part 2: Examining Merits and Limits of Applied AI
  12. AI’s Winograd Moment; or: How Should We Teach Machines Common Sense? Guidance from Cognitive Science 127
  13. Passing the Turing Test? AI Generated Poetry and Posthuman Creativity 151
  14. Why Neuroenhancement is a Philosophical Issue 167
  15. The Future of Artificial Intelligence in International Healthcare: An Index 181
  16. Part 3: Encounters with Artificial Beings in Film, Literature, and Theater
  17. Dark Ecology and Digital Images of Entropy: A Brief Survey of the History of Cinematic Morphing and the Computer Graphics of Artificial Intelligence 209
  18. Sentience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Enhancement in US-American Fiction and Film: Thinking With and Without Consciousness 225
  19. “I, Robot”: Artificial Intelligence and Fears of the Posthuman 237
  20. AI on Stage: A Cross-Cultural Check-Up and the Case of Canada and John Mighton 261
  21. Artificial Intelligence from Science Fiction to Soul Machines: (Re‐)Configuring Empathy between Bodies, Knowledge, and Power 287
  22. List of contributors 309
  23. Index of Authors 315
  24. Index of Subjects 319
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770216-015

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Acknowledgements VII
  4. Introduction: Affirmative and Critical Approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement 1
  5. Part 1: Challenging “Strong AI” from the Perspective of Human Agency
  6. The Artificiality of the Human Mind: A Reflection on Natural and Artificial Intelligence 17
  7. Merits and Limits of AI: Philosophical Reflections on the Difference between Instrumental Rationality and Praxis-Related Hermeneutical Reason 33
  8. Experience, Identity and Moral Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 51
  9. Outsourcing the Brain, Optimizing the Body: Retrotopian Projections of the Human Subject 79
  10. Life Care/Lebenssorge and the Fourth Industrial Revolution 101
  11. Part 2: Examining Merits and Limits of Applied AI
  12. AI’s Winograd Moment; or: How Should We Teach Machines Common Sense? Guidance from Cognitive Science 127
  13. Passing the Turing Test? AI Generated Poetry and Posthuman Creativity 151
  14. Why Neuroenhancement is a Philosophical Issue 167
  15. The Future of Artificial Intelligence in International Healthcare: An Index 181
  16. Part 3: Encounters with Artificial Beings in Film, Literature, and Theater
  17. Dark Ecology and Digital Images of Entropy: A Brief Survey of the History of Cinematic Morphing and the Computer Graphics of Artificial Intelligence 209
  18. Sentience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Enhancement in US-American Fiction and Film: Thinking With and Without Consciousness 225
  19. “I, Robot”: Artificial Intelligence and Fears of the Posthuman 237
  20. AI on Stage: A Cross-Cultural Check-Up and the Case of Canada and John Mighton 261
  21. Artificial Intelligence from Science Fiction to Soul Machines: (Re‐)Configuring Empathy between Bodies, Knowledge, and Power 287
  22. List of contributors 309
  23. Index of Authors 315
  24. Index of Subjects 319
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