Imagine, if you will, an unassuming warehouse in a no-frills industrial strip on the outskirts of a South Carolina town. Make your way through its metal doors and you’ll enter a new dimension — a pixilated netherworld existing in some liminal space between flesh-and-bones and figments of the imagination.
In this screen-whirring, technicolor terrain, the latest breakthroughs of rapidly-evolving A.I. technology rub shoulders with the human race.
Here, you’ll bear witness to the burgeoning artistic bromance between Danny McBride, creator of The Righteous Gemstones, and Beeple, the Charleston area-based digital artist known for the staggering $69.3 million sale of his digital NFT work.
It was Beeple, aka Mike Winkelmann, who first trotted out the idea of a partnership to McBride.
“I was like, it’d be cool if we worked on something and he was really excited about Spoleto,” the artist said, flagging the city’s annual international arts festival.
And with that, we have now entered this unprecedented meeting of the minds, human and otherwise. Synthetic Theatre is the new dimension-bending production to take place at Beeple Studios, which may well be a new harbinger of the state of the arts in Charleston.
Billed as an “AI Live Experiments,” the work is set to take place for two performances only on Oct. 3 and 4. It will be hosted by McBride and will feature top talents including Edi Patterson (aka Gemstones’ sister Judy), writer/director/improv pro Daniel J. O’Connor, and artist and musician Holly Herndon.
In real time
Synthetic Theatre represents the latest of Beeple Studios’ recent string of live events. Past happenings have gathered crowds for the presidential election, fired up game nights and celebrated the first bitcoin slice of pizza.
“It’s been really cool to see the enthusiasm and people coming and discovering the space and learning about digital art,” said Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple.
Beeple Studios has also been partnering with local arts organizations, bringing in diverse artists and people in the community to be a part of these events. It has featured live painting and has also worked with arts hubs including the Gibbes Museum of Art, Redux Contemporary Art Center and Public Works in Summerville. Plans are underway for an event in the coming months that will involve as many as 40 visual artists.
“We’re really trying to bring everybody into the fold with these,” he said.
Live with McBride
Even so, the event with McBride is a departure from past events, as it folds in a performance, which will be flanked by hour-long pre- and post-receptions. Winkelmann said it’s a departure for McBride, too.
“What’s crazy, too, is he’s not done any theater… definitely not in Charleston, but (he has) not anywhere done any sort of live theater thing like this.”
The two sparked a partnership a couple of years ago when McBride visited Beeple Studios and then booked it for an opening cast party for the final season of The Righteous Gemstones. Like AI itself, that relationship continues to evolve.
Winkelmann was already a superfan, having followed all of McBride’s television series, starting with Eastbound & Down through to The Righteous Gemstones, which this spring completed its final season.
“Everything he’s done is just absolutely fucking hilarious. Even just him showing up to the studio, it was like, oh my God,” Winkelmann said, adding that to “be like doing something with them is just absolutely like, what the fuck? Like this is like crazy. So, yeah, it’s a massive, massive honor.”
While the two artists’ disciplines and visions diverge, they are known to leverage high-level skills to deliver some bracingly bold content. Compare, for instance, the bloated bare-butt world that leaders populating Beeple’s online “Everydays” series put up against a butt-naked Walton Goggins as Brother Billy going commando on a pair of water skis in Gemstones.
Winkelmann then learned more about the cast involved in Synthetic Theatre. Patterson and O’Connor, who are married and work together in the Los Angeles-based improv scene. In Charleston, they mounted six sold-out performances at the Piccolo Fringe Festival in Charleston with Tennessee Williams UnScripted and Doozy!
Beeple, who was in the house at one show, said he assumed most of it would be scripted with a bit of little improv. Only by talking to the performers afterwards did he find out otherwise.
“It was like, oh my God! I was just honestly completely blown away because it wasn’t just funny — it was the way the story arc was so perfect and ended on this poignant note.”
Reality bites the dust
Such an exploration comes at a moment when AI is appearing in surprising new places, among them in social media feeds of the current presidential administration. In July, Trump pushed out an AI video on Truth Social that was created by a MAGA supporter and depicted Barack Obama handcuffed by the current president in the Oval Office.
While some may view AI as being at odds with what it means to be human, Winkelmann is not among them.
“I think AI is actually the most human piece of technology we’ve ever built because it’s based on all of the outputs of humans,” he said. “What seems more human? Chat GPT or Windows 95?”
He points out that it’s even possible to argue with Chat GPT, get pushback and bring it around to your perspective. For Winkelmann, the more salient question about the impact of AI is not how it makes something real from artificial intelligence but how it calls into question our perception of real content.
At receptions before and after the October performances, audience members will have chances to further engage with the technology.
One thing that is real for the artist is the importance that Beeple Studios places on gathering humans in the Charleston community in the same room.
“That’s a big, big part of what we’re doing,” the artist said. “We are already in our own world mentally, too much, so figuring out ways to bring everybody together and have a shared experience is something I think people really want.”
According to the email announcement, tickets will be available soon. With around a 300-person capacity per each of the two shows, the studios advised in its announcement to save the date, cautioning “you are not gonna want to miss or people will FOR SURE call you a piece of crap!!!!”
Note: The announcement did not specify whether that declaration was generated by the artist or AI.
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