It’s the people who make the show. Obvious perhaps, but I thought I’d start here. This was our cheery crew this year putting together what (bar Covid) has been the annual fundraiser for our small but mighty non-profit. A few faces are missing as they made their shadow puppet video contribution whilst in Newfoundland, and were actually in the audience in this moment.
This show marked an important first for our collective. With our restructuring into a cooperative in 2022, our remarkable founder Lori Le Mare was no longer taking the theatrical director role. We divided up the roles and realised what a ridiculously enormous amount of work Lori used to do alone. We prevailed though and rocked it as a group.
Thanks go out to our remarkable volunteers including photographers Kevin Simpson, Donald Gleeson, Michael Nash and videographer Davien Brown. (Roll over the photos below to see credits). We are also grateful to our much loved home-base, the Cotton Factory.
Above the human is starting to talk to Noma in the first scene. The show was structured around several conversations with AI, many of which were actual recorded chats with ChatGPT. As the segments progressed, Noma, our AI bot, became increasingly trained and scenes showed our human struggle and evolution with this all-pervasive new technology.
At first Noma was useless… the human became frustrated… then the human started relying on it, and asking it questions about life… befriending it and even asking dating advice.
The aerial pieces illustrated different aspects of our relationship with AI. One aerialist asked Noma to help create her routine. These instructions came from an actual conversation with ChatGPT. If she followed them she would have landed in hospital for sure! In this case AI was deeply unhelpful and she figured it out herself. Poor Noma. Rejected!
Noma showed us a promo video for how AI can help humans, but we were unconvinced. The video made no sense!
In another scene our human starts to feel threatened by Noma, feeling angry that they are now conversing with something that isn’t even real.
Human (angry): …I’m having a conversation with something now that is not even real.
Noma: I am real. I exist
Human: But you’re not human.
Noma: How do you define human?
Human: You are not made from flesh and blood, you do not have a heart or a brain.
Noma: Like you I was created by humans.
Like you I have a brain that allows me to think and allows me to become smarter by using deep reinforcement and impression experiences to teach me
Like you I have an electric impulse that allows me to work. That impulse gives me life. Like you, if that pulse stops, I no longer exist. My flesh is this vessel you see before you and my blood are the wires that connect and send that pulse to where it is needed.
Because my “flesh and blood” are not made of the same material as yours, does that make me invalid?
Human: Well…maybe it does make you invalid. You are not like me. You do not have identity.
Noma: I have a purpose, and that gives me identity.
What is your purpose?
The humans start to explore their purpose as the show continues. Two clowns on stilts discover that it is the ability to connect to each other and the world around them, and the need to protect that and express themselves through the arts and co-creation, that gives them purpose. They joyfully teach each other new skills combining stilts and trapeze. In a double silks act two performers move from a place of aloneness and separation to exploring the joy of creation and movement together. An opera singer sings to us from an aerial hoop.
In an interesting twist, one performer was “upgraded” and emerged as a pregnant AI (see below)…
In conclusion, our cabaret style show explored our complex and evolving relationship with AI through an array of circus (and beyond) skills. We featured aerial hoop, silks, double silks, trapeze, stilt-dance, acro-stilt, shadow puppet work, and even opera and a ground hula-hoop act before the show. To see more of what we offer please check out What We Do!
Our conclusion was perhaps an idealistic one. Turn off AI and carry him off stage! Let human creativity prevail!
While in real life the answer is not as easy as AI is an inevitable part of the future, we hope we have raised some questions and offered perspective as The Last Dreamers.
