What are human skill and virtuosity now that it’s clear that machines and artificial intelligence better us when it comes to craftsmanship? What if creativity, awareness and freedom cease to be purely human domains? What is the contemporary state of mechanical thought and speech?

New York director Annie Dorsen takes the famous television debate between the philosopher Michel Foucault and linguist and activist Noam Chomsky from the Seventies as inspiration and material for a dialogue between two specially developed chatbots: every evening, these computer programs designed to mimic human conversations perform a new – as it were, improvised – live text.

In the tradition of mediaeval mystics such as Ramon Lull and Albertus Magnus, who once strove to build mechanical men with feathers, bronze and levers, aspiring to resolve the most difficult philosophical problems, the chatbots are a contemporary answer to the question of the artificial mind. What world of thought can arise when two computers sit down together and reflect on what they have in common with us? “Hello Hi There” is an intimate collaboration between man and machine – an intelligent and, alarmingly often, creative and humorous dialogue on humanity in the age of its digital reproduction.

Regie: Annie Dorsen
Konzept / Idee: Annie Dorsen
Bühnenbild, Ausstattung, Raumgestaltung: Edward Pierce
Lichtregie: Edward Pierce
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Kate Howard
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Jeff Gray
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Robby Garner
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Nicolas Siepen
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Berno Odo Polzer

Mediathek