Immersive AI Oracle Simulation
36h
2021

⁂



Summary:
Continuous two days of spiritual simulation, world building and deconstruction, excess, surrender, engagement and future observation.

Asterism is a simulation space for possible worlds: virtual, spiritual, dystopian and embracing. In a black hall, accessed through a preparation lock, an extract of reality is constructed - a complete natural copy of a living surrounding. This setting is interwoven with digital and AI controlled components, which create a space on the border of realities. It investigates the question of how much reduction can be done and still maintain the real - or what are the basic components to construct a spiritual experience. This clash and switching between worlds opens an insight into possible futures of a bio-technical nature in which humans are faced with new conditions. The setting was designed as an immersive experience space to which audience and performers alike were given access for 36 hours.

Team:
Concept, Music, Direction - Alexander Schubert
Choreography - Patricia Carolin Mai
Stage and Costume - Pascal Seibicke
Stage and Nature - Hervé Cherblanc
Stage Construction - Johannes Fried
Light Setup - Joanna Ossolinska
Light Design - Diego Muhr, Lasse Schönfelder
Video - Marc Jungreithmeier
Public Participation - Gloria Höckner
VR Concept - Pedro González Fernández, Tobias Pfeil
VR Development & Design - Leonhard Onken Menke
VR Technical Development - Sebastian Olariu
Text Co-Developement - Michael Brailey
Sound Spatialisation - Candid Rütter
Technical Head - Olivier Fauvel
Production - Irene Beraldo

Performers
Ines Assoual, Lise Herdam, Julien Kirrmann, Jeanne L’Homer, Jules Rouxel

Singers / Performers
Cédric Dosch, Mathilde Mertz, Clémence Millet, Céline Peran

Percussionists / Performers
Hsin-Hsuan Wu, Yi-Ping Yang, Olivia Martin, Alexandre Esperet, Thibaut Weber, Emil Kuyumcuyan


Project Description:
„Asterism“ is a location of digital spirituality that people wander towards in order to witness a virtual appearance. It is a naturally emotional site which is as artificial and virtual as it is immersive and real. In an off-site industry hall a post-digital nature setting is recreated which is hosting an artificial intelligence entity. The three- stared sign for asterism classifies a curious movement and is the astrological symbol for a loose assembly of planets or concepts. It can be perceived as a whole, even though it escapes a clear container.

„Asterism“ is a site-specific installation running for 48 hours in a black box hall nonstop. In this setting a piece of nature is recreated which includes a mountain, soil, a lake and environmental aspects such as rain, heat and wind. The installation servers as a destination for a pilgrimage, where the audience can wander towards and then engage with the setting for as long as they want. The installation provides an immersive setting including performance, light and sound design and sections, in which the digital entity speaks to the audience. These predictions or prophecies are generated in real-time and are AI-based so that the content always changes and is unpredictable. The whole performance is subdivided into modules with different performers active in different sections. Like this it will make a significant difference when you enter the installation. The performative part consists of a choir, a percussion ensemble and dancers. It features aspects of rituals, machine-like behavior, artificial movement patterns and virtual-like personas.
The key motivation behind this work is switching between opposing worlds. A nature-like and emotionally immersive setting is created to be as persuasive as possible only to be then dismantled and to show its underlying components. It is a process of creating reality, belief and spirituality. That this is an act of illusion, staging and virtual construction is the core of this happening. It switches between contrasting poles of humanity vs. technology, nature vs. science or abstraction vs. immersion. The aim is a virtual world - a place in which is everything is possible but also everything is intrinsically constructed and thereby hollow. It provides a space dislocated from time and surroundings, like a church, a computer game or a programming environment. In this reduction the visitor may find a calming comfort of surrender or a hollowed out emptiness.
The audience visiting the area are handed a foldout-flyer in advance, propagating the space as a pseudo- religious site. The participants should experience the way there as part of the process, as well as the waiting in line. Upon entering the site they first pass through an entering and resetting stage, in which they are submitted to bright light and white noise followed by complete blackness and silence. Within the area each visitor is invited to experience the event on their own, as a personal situation, but with a sect-like context of the surrounding visitors and performers. The waiting for events to take place is part of the scenery. Visitors are even invited to sleep within the setting.
The piece is realized as an AI-aided composition process in which the basis is the creation of a set of AI programs that generate sonic modules (based on stochastic, pattern generation, data crawling,...). These modules will then be refined and curated by the composer to allow a formal dramaturgy of the evening. Roughly a third of the components will remain probabilistic in the actual presentation of the piece: That means that timing, ornaments, text, durations and intensities are subject to constant change and evolvement.
The setting is an ex nihilo constellation that is based on anchoring artificial digital worlds in an analogue setting. The concept of reference points, coordinates that enable an overlay between a virtual and a „real“ world. Like a render context in a 3D program this strip of landscape is constructed and modeled like a simulated space for simulated rituals and miracles. A hyperreal space that is both empty, hollow and unreal but also subjective, personal and comforting. In this post- digital sanctuary you can encounter a spiritual digital entity. It allows both a devoted surrender as well as a distanced skepticism - and ultimately a switching between these worlds.

Videos:






Photos:

(c) Kai Lietzke	(c) Christophe Urbain	(c) Christophe Urbain
(c) Christophe Urbain	(c) Christophe Urbain	(c) Christophe Urbain
(c) Kai Lietzke	(c) Thais Breton	(c) Christophe Urbain
(c) Christophe Urbain	(c) Christophe Urbain	(c) Christophe Urbain
(c) Christophe Urbain	(c) Patricia Carolin Mai	(c) Christophe Urbain
(c) Jean-Philippe Thiellay	(c) Christophe Urbain	(c) Christophe Urbain
(c) Kai Lietzke	(c) Thais Breton	(c) Kai Lietzke
(c) Alexander Schubert