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In his well-known thought experiment regarding artificial intelligence (AI), John Searle sketched out the philosophic idea of “The Chinese room” – a room in which comprehensible rules (a program) allow a person to perfectly correlate one set of unknown linguistic symbols (a question) with another (an answer) of the same unfamiliar kind. In our creation of an AI-based micro-opera for humans and machines, we have come to reflect upon our concept as an artistic response to Searle’s arguments and a mirroring complement to his debated figure. Our immersive and interactive opera was conceived as a modular series of musically paced meetings between individual visitors and a singing seeress in contact with the digital realm. As an analogy to the Delphic oracle, the seeress delivered AI-prompted answers to the visitors’ questions in real time, framed by poetical, musical, and theatrical structures. In Searle’s Chinese room, goal-oriented computational mechanisms remain detached from understanding during the linguistic operation. In our Delphic room, understanding is key for carrying out the aesthetic operations intended to artistically stimulate a coupling of intellectual and visceral information processing in open-ended and personal ways.

To probe into the artistic possibilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) generating operatic elements, we have engaged in a practice-led inquiry as designers and artists. We took the process of prototyping a chamber opera with interactive features as our starting point, exploring how AI could work as a source of stimuli in opera productions, and how prototyping might add to the design and evaluation of AI integrated into an operatic context. Our core idea was to use AI to generate personalized lyrics in a dynamic opera libretto, based on input to the AI from individual visitors attending the operatic event. In response to visitors, the opera singer read and rendered the AI-generated text artistically in real-time and in a karaoke-like manner in accordance with the musical framework and the embodiment of the operatic character. Hence, the concept comprised both human-to-machine, machine-to-human, and human-to-human interaction. While some design elements stimulated the participating opera visitors, others stimulated the performing opera singer, supported by an informational framework composed verbally through a prototypical manuscript, audially through a prototypical accompaniment, and visually through a prototypical setting. The prototype was play-tested and evaluated in relation to our artistic intentions. The AI-based prototype added parameters to the artistic process such as sketching narrow AI for the operatic format and evaluating articulated qualities. Furthermore, we suggest that the conceptual artwork can be seen as an example of a contemporary turn in operatic evolution, with human performers forging not only bodily, but also intellectual relationships with machines.

Med anledning av att två kulturinstitutioner – Världskulturmuseet i Göteborg och Halmstads konsthall – visade utställningar med speltema under sommaren 2023, såg Hedvig Jalhed och Mattias Rylander anledning att reflektera över spelens status i förhållande till konst och kultur av idag. Centralt i deras betraktelse är synen på agens i lek och spel, samt ludik som konstform. Med utgångspunkt i de bägge utställningarnas utformning och innehåll kunde två olika förhållningssätt till spelinteraktion och spelestetik skönjas. Medan världskulturmuseet betonade spelens utveckling och utbredning historiskt och tvärkulturellt satte Halmstads konsthall ljuset på särskilda spelelement som konstobjekt, delvis tagna ur sitt spelmässiga sammanhang. I det förra fallet utgör konst- och kultföremål funktionella och spelbara spel, medan det i det senare fallet skapas konstverk genom eller på spel.

How can microsocial rituals connected to a specific site be used as interaction templates for artistic purposes? And how can we distort such rituals artistically in order to make them memorable events? As artists, we regard distortion as the process that gives character and distinction to things and situations, as well as something that confuses and enriches information and interpretation. Through examples emerging from the operatic production Chronos’ Bank of Memories (2019–2022), set in empty shop stores with interacting visitors, we have recalled and fleshed out issues of rituality with distorted proportions. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, its production was interrupted and later on revived, which affected the work. This exposition covers aspects of both our artistic practice in general and this particular opera’s tendency to encompass distorted rituals. Commentary texts, images, and audio/video clips are arranged into an introduction and then three thematic strands in order to offer a reasoned overview of our work process., VIS is a digital journal for artistic research with peer-reviewed expositions presented on the SAR Research Catalogue publishing platform.