In the AI age, how have artists envisioned robots in theater, film and ballet?

Traditionally, when robots have appeared in artwork, it’s usually been to kill us or to make us really feel liked. 

Among the many murderers are the replicants in “Blade Runner,” HAL in “2001: A House Odyssey” and Skynet within the “Terminator” franchise. The machines of “The Matrix,” in contrast, have been content material to merely suck out our power. Within the 1920 play that gave us the phrase “robotic,” — “Rossum’s Common Robots,” which Reducing Ball Theater mounted to pleasant, provocative impact in fall — units invented to alleviate our drudgery wind up desirous to annihilate the human race. 

Different bots, like Ava in “Ex Machina” and Samantha in “Her,” have served as attractive lovers for lonely or thwarted males. In “Wifelike,” the feminine droids are each companions (to widowers) and killers (when hacked by a criminal offense ring). 

However for the reason that launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, signaling a mighty leap ahead in robots’ and synthetic intelligence’s potential to mimic human interplay, we’ve craved a brand new era of artwork to assist us perceive our relationship to machines and what, if something, distinguishes us from them.  

Bay Space artists have heeded the decision, most notably with San Francisco Ballet’s “Mere Mortals,” which returns for an encore run April 18-24 following its explosive January premiere. It joins current runs of “Massive Information” at American Conservatory Theater and “My Dwelling on the Moon” at San Francisco Playhouse in personifying AI in artwork for the ChatGPT period — giving it a face, a bearing, a character.

In “Mere Mortals,” choreographed by Aszure Barton, the connection is metaphoric. The expertise that Prometheus (Isaac Hernández) steals from the gods isn’t simply fireplace but in addition each device we’ve made since. Pandora (Jennifer Stahl) is information as a complete; she rises from the primordial goo, studying to face and transfer and flex with alarming alacrity, sashaying apparently unseen amongst a marching mass of robed people. When she companions with Epimetheus (Parker Garrison) for a pas de deux, their choice has the vibe of strangers assembly, seeing they’re the correct measurement for one another and deciding they’re meant to construct one thing collectively.

“Initially, she’s described because the all-gifted and all-giving; she offers good and dangerous,” Ballet Creative Director Tamara Rojo informed the Chronicle of the parable of Pandora. “Later translations sort of made her a brand new Eve.”

In “Massive Information,” written by Kate Attwell, the system embodied by B.D. Wong is extra particularly the AI algorithm that feeds you suggestions primarily based in your previous searches, clicks and display time. In some methods, he is aware of the uptight adults of their 30s and 40s on whom he preys higher than they know themselves, suggesting pursuits (communal residing, say) that they didn’t even know they’d. He’s creepy, by no means taking a social cue to go away a room he hasn’t been invited into, however then he flips that creepiness into desirability. He says aloud the nervousness that had hitherto remained inchoate in somebody’s consciousness — attempting a bunch of choices till one hits, if want be — then instantly positions himself because the panacea to the issue he’s created. Like Pandora, he dances a bit, following a human across the room as shadow or foil, thrusting himself ahead for a sexual encounter.

Wong’s character doesn’t need to kill us or make us really feel liked, precisely. He simply desires our consideration; just like the tech in “The Matrix,” he’s an power sucker. But when we die, he doesn’t thoughts. Perhaps he can use our deaths to get different individuals’s consideration. 

In “My Dwelling on the Moon,” written by Minna Lee, Vera (Rinabeth Apostol) has been programmed with a sole mission: to do no matter it takes to make Mai (Jenny Nguyen Nelson) blissful — first by serving to Mai together with her pho restaurant, then by convincing herself that she loves Mai and could possibly be Mai’s romantic accomplice, if that’s what it takes. Vera’s all earnest sweetness; the play implicitly attributes the evil behind her ginned-up emotions to Vera’s human creator, Gigi (Erin Mei-Ling Stuart).

Earlier than I noticed “Mere Mortals,” I used to be most interested in how the ballet would painting Pandora, getting ready myself to be fascinated by a mysterious, otherworldly being and fearful of no matter horrors she would unleash. However Pandora doesn’t seem for some time; the primary a part of the ballet is dedicated to beings in black cloaks, solo or en masse. They certain in from upstage to assault, appendages skittering, nearly the way in which a spider sidles down on a silken thread. Then they menace like ants, whirring concerning the stage, busy little employees that need to conquer. The rating, by Floating Factors, also called Sam Shepherd, at instances even seems like screaming bugs or the machine gunfire of a first-person shooter recreation.

I’m nonetheless undecided what they have been, however I made a decision to interpret them because the world that made Prometheus and Pandora potential, realizing that, in my deal with how artwork is depicting AI with human artists, I might need missed the purpose that we people are literally the scary ones. I considered one in every of my favourite moments from Taylor Mac’s current “Bark of Tens of millions” at Cal Performances. In a track from the standpoint of Mary Shelley — whose “Frankenstein” is commonly taken as the same allegory about innovations that appear to be us and elude our grasp — Mac wonders, “Did I make a monster? No. I wrote the prose. The world is the monster within the emperor’s garments.”

The Pandora and Prometheus myths, Rojo defined, are about people’ insatiable need for information and energy. “It is that problem of whether or not that information actually offers freedom or, in actual fact, enslaves you additional,” she mentioned. Prometheus is “the Elon Musk of his time,” she added. “He’s that particular person that can ever attempt to be the neatest, the primary, at no matter value for everybody else.”

Attain Lily Janiak: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com