ARS ELECTRONICA: dmstfctn winner of the European digital deal open call by Ars Electronica

Jury Statement

Dmstfctn is the artistic duo selected by Sineglossa for the residency at Tecnopole, supported by Cineca and FBK. With the proposal titled Waluigi’s Mask the duo continue their research on the relationship between simulation, machine learning and AI folklore. This project will recover the archetypes of the Commedia dell’Arte to show what is usually hidden in our interactions with generative Ais: the potential of Large Language Models to confabulate, cheat and deceive, producing disinformation. Dmstfctn moves beyond simply scientific debunking and rather engages audiences in an interactive exploration of its outputs, showing how fake news can be easily created and spread.

Federico Bomba, Sineglossa Art Director

Dmstfctn is the artistic duo selected by Sineglossa for the residency at Tecnopole, supported by Cineca and FBK, as part of the major digital arts festival ARS ELECTRONICA in Linz. 

dmstfctn will create a single-channel audiovisual interactive installation provisionally titled Waluigi’s masks. The installation will combine real-time 3D rendering and text generation to create a series of masks able to improvise short theatrical sketches in the style of Commedia dell’Arte. Inspired by common Commedia archetypes, the masks will represent different AIs with a tendency to hallucinate, confabulate, repeat rumours, create their own truths or outright cheat – traits that have been observed in Large Language Models trained on vast amounts of text.

Rendered in real-time using a video game engine and voiced through text-to-speech, the masks will improvise sketches within the traits of the archetype they are based on. They will be prompted and teased by an audience using their phone to drop theatrical props in the scene that represent common jokes, sayings and superstitions, as well as by asking open questions.

The project will be exhibited in Bologna for a month in December. More info here.