Told Digitally

Students will experiment with various new and emerging AI technologies to create a public, theatrical Lecture Performance with and about Artificial Intelligence for a general NTNU audience.

Currently, artificial intelligence and machine learning platforms like Chat-GPT, Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion are rapidly changing how we understand human creativity and innovation. The available technology will probably be very different from now at the time when the Village will start in January 2024. Students will thus develop their unique understanding of AI interfaces, working together towards creating a public, theatrical Lecture Performance for a general NTNU audience scheduled for the end of the semester. Your group contribution could take all sorts of forms and shapes ranging from a critical presentation with live-created elements over a pre-produced multimedia narrative about AI to an interactive gameshow with audience interaction.

Relevant competency 

Whether you are interested in narratives and literary expression, in audiovisual rhetoric and strategic communication, in graphic and image design, in music production, or in stage performances, you can contribute to the resulting Lecture Performance. It is in no way required (but highly welcomed) to bring all your skills and interests into class, whether you are playing the guitar, like to scribble manga artworks and cartoons, or have earlier experience on the stage. The only essential skill is the willingness to explore how your individual interests towards AI can be communicated in creative, playful, or thought-provoking ways. The instructor is going to provide inspiration, suggestions, and “best practices” of how to make a stage show engaging for audiences. Only some of the students will be live on stage while others could be contributing “behind their screens” or in content production/preparation to the final show which will blur the distinction between human and non-human content, between pre-arranged texts, images, and sounds and those generated “on the spot” in unpredictable live AI interaction. 

About the village

Questions that will be explored in this Village:

• How is Artificial Intelligence building on existing knowledge, on big data, and on the “cultural memory” available to search engines, for instance through Google searches?
• What are the ethical and political challenges in AI development, for instance through the reproduction and consolidation of stereotypes and cliches?   
• How can humans interact and cooperate with machine learning and direct it toward interesting, surprising, and lastly practical results? 
• What will be the role of human creativity in the near future, what new fields and professions of experience and expertise with AI interaction are currently emerging, such as the “prompt designer”?
• How can we communicate our developing understanding of AI and machine learning to a general audience not only about but also through AI interaction?
• How can we capture the audience’s interest, build a thought-provoking collage of approaches and reflections, and thus create exciting 60 minutes that stay into our visitors’ memories and inspire further engagement with the topic “human / AI creativity”?

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