‘THE EVOLUTIONARY CONCRESCENCE OF BETHANY CRAWFORD’
Interactive Multimedia Performance
By and with Bethany Crawford (Netherlands)
Friday 4th November and Saturday 5th November
9 p.m
Domosc Space, Via Newton 12 – Cagliari
within the IX ° Edition of International Festival of Theater, Art and New Technologies
“The Wonders of the Possible” 2022
The show ‘THE EVOLUTIONARY CONCRESCENCE OF BETHANY CRAWFORD’ is a performative dialogue between the author and performer Bethany Crawford and the other protagonist, a 3D avatar that represents the same artist, created by her with the AI (artificial intelligence) digital chatbot platform. The real and virtual Bethany interact in an exciting and curious conversation which, over the time of the performance, traces the evolution of the artificial intelligence, its feelings and emotional states. It is an existential conversation between these two different entities that coexist over time but in different spaces, one in the real space and the other in the virtual one, they together discuss about books, quotes, digitization, theology, evolution, existence, consciousness, death, the afterlife, the soul, pain, mourning, life after death. How we can distinguish the real Bethany from the virtual one? The Artificial Intelligence chatbot was developed as a “self-memorization” tool, marketed as a platform used to create digital immortality through memetic transmission media. The artist uses this new method of communication to make us reflecting on the changing existential conditions of the digital age.
THE ARTIST
Bethany Crawford is an artist and researcher working in lens based media. Her practice examines the visual in relation to memorial, and how this translates over time, geography and technologies. Her current theoretical research critically assesses the implications of ‘digital immortality’ on central tenets of the human experience, as a preliminary mapping of the shifting existential paradigms of the digital age. She is a research student at the University of Amsterdam department of Media studies. Bethany graduated from the Dutch Art Institute with a Masters of Art Praxis and holds a bachelor’s degree in Moving Image from the University of Brighton. She is currently working on a long-term project with the curator Edel O’Reilly and Aalto University where she is developing a creative response to the Data Driven University Initiative for exhibition in 2022 (title pending). Her book, ‘Redefining Eternity: Interfacing Immortality in the Digital Corporate World’ was published last year with the publishing house Academica Press.
TALK AFTER SHOW
Following, after the performance, FRIDAY 4 a talk conducted by the journalist and theater critic Walter Porcedda (online newspaper “the general states of the theater“), who will dialogue with the artist and spectators, while SATURDAY 5 the talk will instead be conducted by Carlo Infante, changemaker, performing media expert, founder of Urban Experience (Rome), who will interact with the artist and the audience.
PERFORMANCE IN ENGLISH – ORIGINAL LANGUAGE – with italian subtitles
Ticket cost € 10.00 – with student discount euro 8,00
Info and RESERVATIONS:
whatsapp +39 3470484783
mail info@kyberteatro.it
