Introduction to Drama and Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

This round table has been designed to provide a broad approach to the use of digital technology in theatre and performing arts.The issue about the relation between theatre, performance and new media, has been arisen since the Eighties, when contemporary dance started to introduce robots and electronics on stage, or when fringe theatre investigates the relation between live event and TV camera and monitors.Since then, much has been written about it, so that it is now possible to follow different approaches to the question.Here the panellists will talk about different topics: new dance and new media, the theatre and virtual reality, the simulation of space and time in virtual representation, the interactive stage and costumes.All of these are topics that deserve a full length discussion, and certainly this is just a start, and I invite whoever is interested to come and join us at tomorrow morning workshop, at 11 am, here at Supreme Council for Culture, for further details. 2.Now, let me spent few minutes to discuss how theoretical links can be drawn between drama and artificial intelligence, so that more effective creative combinations of the two can be developed.The points I will try to make are:1) Digital performance isn't about technology but about language -it is aesthetic rather than prosthetic.2) Theatre and Digital Multimedia are both live events, happening in the 'here and now'.3) Drama and Artificial Intelligence share much in common because the basic element of both disciplines is "actions" over, for example, 'thoughts', 'words', 'descriptions'.Often digital media has been seen from a too specific technological point of view.We should all agree that the question about digital theatre isn't about increasing the quantity of gimmickry on stage.And we should because it is well known that theatre, although too often associated with poetry and literature, has always confronted new technology.As mere technology, digital media don't represent any significant innovation in theatre.This leads us to consider the clash -or the relation -between digital media and theatre from a more abstract point of view.Critical theory on the subject -particularly Brenda Laurel and Janet Murray -has clearly stated that in both cases (theatre and digital multimedia), the core is an event: a live event.Digital multimedia is closer to the theatre based notion of hic et nunc, -the here and now -than to the way we show images on screens.Whereas some literature on digital media, for example Lev Manovich, grew out of the field of film studies and therefore tended to link digital media with cinema, later studies linked digital media more closely to computer studies and science.I would further suggest that the primary element in both computer science and drama is the notion of procedure and algorithm.Both are 'procedural' disciplines, based on a kind of algorithm.The definition of Algorithm "is a finite list of well-defined instructions for accomplishing some task that, given an initial state, will terminate in a defined end-state".