“It may be one of the most remarkable outcomes of digital technology that humans can now engage in conversations with algorithmic actors. This phenomenon – which originates from ELIZA and has gained new momentum with the introduction of graphical avatars – raises fundamental questions to the art of theatre, as it may undermine the dominance of human actors. The conference whose proceedings are gathered in this volume addressed this topic by presenting not only scholarly but also artistic approaches. Hosted by the Medientheater at Humboldt University in Berlin, it embraced the opportunity and included the performance BLACK 7 by the group Theater.Macht.Staat. In the wake of the performance, Carolin Kipka and Anton Pohle from Theater.Macht.Staat exchanged some thoughts on the theatrical potential of human actors on the one hand and nonhuman agents on the other with performance scholar and artist Ioana Jucan, who had introduced BLACK 7 at the conference, and Florian Leitner, director of the Medientheater. The following article collects these thoughts, discussing topics such as: the challenges faced by actors when embodying avatars that represent abstract algorithms; the artistic potential of avatars joining or even substituting human actors; the difficulty of artistically reflecting on artificial intelligence and consciousness when being a nonartificial intelligence (whatever this may mean); chatbots as performers in algorithmic theatre; the impulses that may be derived from performative approaches such as BLACK 7, early AI research projects such as ELIZA, and more recent artistic developments for a “Media Theatre”, particularly with respect to the notion of “scene.” As an initial impulse for this discussion, a rather bold question was asked: Is the human the problem?“

Italian translation of the article “On Robots and Turtles: A Posthuman Perspective on Camera and Image Movement after Michael Snow’s ‘La région centrale’”.

[AVAILABLE ONLINE]

Summary:

“Florian Leitner nimmt in seinem Beitrag das Verhältnis zwischen medialen Dispositiven und Dispositionen im Sinne psychischer Strukturen in den Blick. Dabei unterscheidet er zunächst eine an Foucault orientierte diskurstheoretisch konzipierte und eine an Baudry orientierte psychoanalytisch konzipierte Perspektive. Erstere modelliere das Subjekt und dessen psychische Verfasstheit als Produkt vorgängiger Dispositive, während letztere die Dispositive als Produkt bzw. mimetische Reproduktion psychologischer Strukturen verstehe. In beiden Ansätzen sieht Leitner eine jeweils unidirektionale Wirkungsweise – im ersten Fall vom Dispositiv zur Disposition, im anderen Fall von der psychischen Disposition zum Dispositiv – angelegt. Demgegenüber schlägt er vor, das Verhältnis von Dispositiv und Disposition, das im Hinblick auf Medienbildung für die Modellierung von Medium-Subjekt-Relationen von zentraler Bedeutung ist, als prozessuales Wechselspiel zu konzipieren, das Ursprungsparadoxien im Sinne einer Henne-Ei-Problematik zu unterlaufen versucht.”

On Pixar’s WALL-E, Michael Snow’s La région centrale, Chris Cunningham’s All Is Full Of Love and Dziga Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera.

Extract:

“Considering a subjectivity which embodies a multitude of points of view seems to be a crucial aspect when discussing the cultural impact of robotic technology. We do not necessarily think about robots in terms of subjectivity. But it might be of some epistemic value to ask under what premises we would be able to do so. And it appears that robotic subjectivity cannot be described adequately by approaches that conceive of it as the embodiment of one point of view. Unlike Snow’s robotic arm and WALL-E, robots are not solitary machines – at least not any more, and they will be even less in the future. They form part of complex networks which are so dispersed that we can impossibly attribute a single point of view to them. Instead these networks generate a multitude of points of view. And if there is robot-subjectivity, it is the embodiment of such a multitude – just like Vertov’s camera-eye. The subjectivity of the robot is the subjectivity of cinema.” (p. 76-77)

[AVAILABLE ONLINE via the journal's homepage or Project Muse]