Lure – a music-theatrical exploration of AI (open studio)

In dialogue with a learning machine: an exploration of music, interactive theatre and live performance through Artificial Intelligence

Detailed instructions on how to attend the performance will be sent out to you in advance via email. Please register through Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.de/e/lure-a-music-theatrical-exploration-of-ai-open-studio-tickets-128258557799

A curious and creative character awakens. Developed inside a computer it yearns to learn. You meet it in our performance. It wants to learn about you and starts a conversation. It tries to express itself by playing with a musician. And it leaves that space to explore the world by itself.

In our open studio we invite you to a playful session with music, performance and collective discovery. You’ll be able to interact with our character Parzival, a machine-learning model created after the mediaeval adventurer.

With our prototypes we study three different artistic and technological approaches. Develop empathy with the computational character by discovering how it learns. Experience its inner workings through theatrical expression. And be touched by its musical sensitivity.

The artistic research project “Lure” transfers questions on the topics of human–machine interaction and artificial intelligence to the fields of theatre and music. We will open our studio and show our first technical prototypes and artistic steps as work-in-progress, in a theatrically staged online meeting.

“Lure” is a project of Munich composer and theatre maker Mathis Nitschke, Amsterdam interactive artists Luciano Pinna and Klasien van de Zandschulp, scientists from the Munich Volkswagen Group Machine-Learning Research Lab (argmax.ai) Patrick van der Smagt, Djalel Benbouzid, Nutan Chen and Munich dramaturg Elsa Büsing. 

with
Mara Widmann: Narrator
Martina Koppelstetter: Singer
Matthias Lachenmayer: Drummer
Katharina Dobner: Mask and fire design

Besides our custom development tools we use: Google Magenta, OpenAI GPT-2, RunwayML, AIVA, Botsquad, Lens Studio

“Lure” is funded and supported by the Dutch Creative Industries Fund NL, the German Fonds Darstellende Künste, and the Volkswagen Group Machine Learning Research Lab.

Thanks to Pathos Theater, Mario Klingemann, Memo Akten, Vladimir Viro, Arjan Scherpenisse, Botond Cseke, Dominik Theobald, Milo Schagen, Michael Schwarzfischer, Tankred Dorst and Wolfram von Eschenbach.