1st Edition
Choreomata Performance and Performativity after AI
Is artificial intelligence (AI) becoming more and more expressive, or is human thought adopting more and more structures from computation? What does it mean to perform oneself through AI, or to construct one’s subjectivity through AI? How does AI continue to complicate what it means to have a body? Has the golden age of AI, especially with regards to creative applications, already ended?
Choreomata: Performance and Performativity after AI is a book about performance and performativity, but more specifically, it is a book about the performance of artificiality and the performance of intelligence. Both humans and human-designed computational forces are thoroughly engaged in an entangled, mutual performance of AI. Choreomata spins up a latticework of interdisciplinary thought, pairing theoretical inquiry from philosophy, information theory, and computer science with practical case studies from visual art, dance, music, and social theory.
Through cross-disciplinary proportions and a diverse roster of contributors, this book contains insights for computer scientists, social scientists, industry professionals, artists, and beyond.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Tiziana Terranova
Preface
List of Contributors
A. Performing Artificiality, Performing Intelligence
Subjectivity
- 0-Degree Plane of Neuroelectronic Continuity: AI & Psychosocial Evaporation
Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo
2. Performing the Automated Image
Anna Munster & Ned Rossiter
3. Negative Aesthetics: AI and Non-Performance
Luciana Parisi
4. Performance, Performativity, and Subjectivity at the Intersection of Art and Digital Cultures
Barbara Bolt
Creativity
5. Performing Creativity: Text-to-Image Synthesis and the Mimicry of Artistic Subjectivity
Keith Tilford
6. Galatea Reloaded: Imagination Inside-Out Imagine
Reza Negarestani
Representation
7. Intelligent Company: Co-creative AI as Anamnesis
Jonathan Impett
8. Autonomy, Intention, Performativity: Navigating the AI Divide
Jon McCormack
9. Interaction Grammars: Beyond the Imitation Game
AA Cavia
B. Choreomatic Bestiary
Encounter
10. Choreomata
Sofian Audry
11. The Musicality of Imperfection
Davor Vincze
12. Robot Choreography, Choreorobotics, and Humanist Technology: A Conversation between Dr. Madeline Gannon and Dr. Ken Goldberg
Catie Cuan
Proliferation
13. Ars Autopoetica: On Authorial Intelligence, Generative Literature, and the Future of Language
Sasha Stiles
14. AI, Architecture, and Performance: Walt Disney Concert Hall Dreams
Refik Anadol & Pelin Kivrak
15. Performing AI-Generated Theater Plays
Klára Vosecká & Tomáš Musil & Rudolf Rosa
Annihilation
16. Identity Dissolution: Using Artificial Intelligence for Artistic Exploration of Identity Models
Alexander Schubert
17. Noise and Subjectivity in the Era of Machine Learning
Mattin
After-Body
18. Descendent: AI and the Body beyond Hybridization
Roberto Alonso Trillo
19. Descendent: Understanding the Digital Production Process from Human Interpretation to Algorithmic Interpolation to AI Inference
Peter Nelson
20. Ghosts of the Hidden Layer
People & Things
Jennifer Walshe
Biography
Roberto Alonso Trillo is a musician and researcher based in Hong Kong, where he works as an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University. His practice explores the connections between different artistic disciplines, from dance and music to video art and interactive sound installations. His recent work examines networked hybrid music practices endemic to a world increasingly mediated by AI and machine learning. His multipronged practice-based and -led research, operating at the intersection between philosophy, sociology, and cultural studies, spans areas as diverse as a post-structuralist reconsideration of musical workhood and authorship, technologically enhanced string pedagogy, gesture analysis, and interface development.
Roberto is the author of Death and (Re)Birth of J. S. Bach (Routledge) and has published in journals such as Leonardo, Organised Sound, and Music Education Research. He is a co-founder, with his colleague Peter AC Nelson, of the MetaCreativity Lab at Hong Kong Baptist University. His long-time partnership with Marek Poliks – DisintegratorAI – has led to the publication of several CDs, journal articles, and the exhibition of interactive artworks in international venues.
Marek Poliks is an artist, engineer, and theorist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He works with machine learning as applied to sound, digital media, robotics, and sculpture.
Marek leads technology at the design firm Polytope, where he builds interactive infrastructure for clients like the Dubai Future Foundation. His long-time partnership with Roberto Alonso – DisintegratorAI – has led to CDs for NEOS and Creotz Ediciones, articles for Leonardo and Organised Sound, a GAN-and Transformer-driven raw audio synthesis engine (‘Demiurge’), a real-time behavior-responsive data interface (‘Archon’), and two soft robots (‘Hydra’ and ‘Polyp’), and this book.
Marek has a PhD from Harvard, an ASCAP award in music journalism, and a career as an artist exhibiting around the globe.
