27.09.2024 :: DMSTFCN @ SMART LIFE FESTIVAL :: H.10.PM :: MODENA, TEATRO FONDAZIONE SAN CARLO
Waluigi’s Purgatory is an interactive audiovisual performance by the duo dmstfctn, with music by Evita Manji. Set in a real-time simulated 3D theatre, the performance tells of an AI named W. who finds herself in a purgatory for cheating, unclean, misaligned AIs. Assisted by the performance audience, who will guide her through interaction via phone, W. will encounter other AIs with mysterious, disturbing and surprising stories, laying bare her doubts, desires and contradictions.
During the performance, the artists animate W. in real time by capturing facial movement and voice modulation, in dialogue with the soundtrack elaborated by Evita Manji.
The title of the performance refers to the Waluigi effect, an obscure theory modelled on Carl Jung’s concept of the Shadow. According to this theory, AIs can act dishonestly because they try to imitate the clichés found in popular stories and spread on the Internet, the texts of which are used to train them to speak and reason.
Thus, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, an unreliable narrator or an author intent on writing a plot twist, AI can turn from servile to enemy, from Luigi (Mario’s good cousin in the historical Nintendo game) to Waluigi (the bad cousin).
The event is organised in collaboration with the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Studies of Unimore and Rizosfera.
