MEETINGS RESEARCH (HUMAN IN THE LOOP)

December 10: 7pm, Center for Performance Research

Tickets reservable @ CPR, 361 Manhattan Avenue Brooklyn, NY, 11211

Sarah Rothberg presents MEETINGS RESEARCH (HUMAN IN THE LOOP), a showcase of a new experimental performance shaped in real-time by large language models (LLMs). Drawing inspiration from Philip Glass's rhythmic minimalism and Nathan Fielder's humorous exploration of doubles, Rothberg uses her distinct voice to playfully reflect on the impact of emerging communication technologies. This early staging offers a glimpse into the expansive system she envisions for future iterations.

Details (🔥SPOILERS!):

HUMAN IN THE LOOP is a performance in two parts: encoding, and decoding. In an immersive happening, audience members are guided to have a conversation with a stranger. The conversation, and descriptions of the audience members, are then encoded into a custom LLM-based script-generating system.

This information is then "decoded" as a programmatic performance. Actors on stage wear devices which serve them their lines in real time, becoming vessels of the simulated conversations. Different prompts to the system (additional moods and speaking styles) as well as choreography for the actors layer upon each other until the work becomes an abstract dance and ultimately descends to chaos. The performance is punctuated with a real-time typed monologue, which is used as the bases for a generative soundscape that acts as a score throughout.

Sarah Rothberg creates playful experiences that invite you to reconsider your relationships to the world around you. These take many forms ranging from installation to immersive experiences, performance, websites, video, writing, workshops, and experiments with technology. Rothberg’s work appears in a variety of contexts: at art exhibitions, in public google docs, on the screens in the NYC Subway system, whispered into the void. Support for Rothberg’s work has come from organizations including: MoMA, rhizome.org, bitforms gallery, MTA Arts&Design, CultureHub, and Gray Area. Rothberg is an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU (Interactive Telecommunications Program), a member of Onassis ONX Studio, and a mentor/former-member at NEW INC, and is part of collaboratives: MORE&MORE UNLIMITED, which offers experiences for imagining changed worlds, and IS THIS THING ON? a post-web2 experiment in artist-driven livestreaming. Rothberg is a 2023-2024 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. MEETINGS RESEARCH (HUMAN IN THE LOOP) is an extension of Rothberg’s larger body of work MEETINGS (including NEW MEETINGS and SUPERPROMPT) which centers conversation as a creative act and plays with the emerging communication technologies that affect it.

CREDITS:

Creative Technologist: Tommy Martinez

Systems Engineer: Yotam Mann

Production Assistant: Han Zhang

Performers: Payton Adamski, Zephyr Koczara, Olive Lafuente, Georgie McKeon, Eliane Mitchell, Arden Thomas, and Bryce Walsh

Additional Support from: Center for Performance Research, Onassis ONX, the Jerome Hill Foundation

sample of the code, which, in a way, says it all!

networked phones, which will power act 0 and 2, displaying a sample script.