Two guys walk into a Tru Blues House of Wings on Johnnie Dodds Boulevard. They depart with a not-particularly-simple plan. That is to reconcile human-powered art with the rapid advance of artificial intelligence, or AI.
Only in Charleston, y’all.
The area has become sufficiently alluring to attract HBO hitmakers like Danny McBride and mega-million-commanding digital artists like Beeple (aka Mike Winkelmann). Both live and work in Charleston..
And when the two hatch an artistic bromance over finger-licking pub grub, the outcome is bound to raise some eyes, poke some fun and provoke some solid thought.
A meeting of minds
“Synthetic Theatre,” the collaboration of Beeple Studios and McBride’s Rough House Pictures, was unleashed in a pixelated profusion at the artist’s Cainhoy space on Oct. 3 and 4. A theatrical exploration of the potential and the limits of AI, the roughly one-hour production converged improv, contemporary music, aerial artistry, robotics and an imperious AI agent by the name of Chad.
The overarching question at the shows was whether AI could enhance – or even supplant – human-powered artistic performance, by way of scenes spotlighting various artists availing of AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Emceed by McBride and Beeple, the two served respectively as AI’s detractor and defender, volleying points and counterpoints on the technology’s agency in delivering compelling art.
This involved more than a few humans, starting with protestors clustered on both sides of parkway outside the entrance to Beeple Studios. In black T-shirts urging all to “end AI before it ends us” and brandishing handwritten signs with statements like “humans before machines” and “support artists not algorithm,” the performance – as these protestors undoubtedly were performers – seeped out of the studio and into Cainhoy street.
Enter Chad
Inside, McBride and Beeple manned the stage, joined by two robots, to casually lob questions to the audience and make stage-worthy sport of the man-versus-machine notion they mined.
They were joined also by Chad, a computer-generated Oz of an AI tool projected onto the numerous screens wrapping walls and columns in green glaring type. Throughout, Chad’s level, pleasant HAL 9000-esque voice chimed in, registering more sinister and imperious as the technology asserted its supremacy. This prompted McBride and friends to hurl a few impolite insults its way. In short, as an AI tool, Chad was a tool.
The evening then presented a succession of artists interacting with AI tools, among them ChatGPT, which generates text and answers questions; Midjourney, which can create images from text; Suno, a music tool capable of transforming a text prompt into songs and soundscapes; and others.
The thrust of the art to be created was often crowd-sourced from the audience. For a short film at the Saturday show, they offered up a setting (Myrtle Beach), a name (“Hershey Highway”), characters (a homecoming queen); and chocolate ice-cream-eating ax proxy for less savory, bodily pursuits. Beeple was then dispatched to an off-stage command center, robots in tow, with McBride from time to time checking on his feverish progress.
In Act.One_Dance, performance artists Lauren Rubio and Maddy Melotte of Out on a Limb took to an aerial lyra, while projections transformed their movements in real time, morphing their images into everything from classical statues to robots, and leveling up the beauty of their work in ways that illustrated how AI can be additive.
Act.Two_Music trained attention to Berlin-based composer/sound artist/AI researcher Holly Herndon, whose custom AI model Holly+ transforms her own voice into different languages. In a TedTalks approach, she imbued polka stylings to a song about the Waffle House, then enlisted Brandon James in a version “Day-O,” singing with one mic a duet in his voice and Herndon’s via AI.
This then segued to Act.Three_Improv, Edi Patterson (who played Judy in “The Righteous Gemstones” performed alongside improv pro Dan O’Connor, in three increasingly sketches gauging if AI could usurp the pair’s comic stylings. Not a chance. The gloriously messy, flesh-and-blood business of being human eclipsed the digital projections, confirmed by the enthusiastic vote from audience members deeming the lesser of the AI versions an uncontested victory.
The hourlong evening then culminated in Act.Four_Film screening, a wild, dyspeptic digital ride set in Myrtle Beach with copious slathered chocolate ice cream, smacked in some ways of the oh-no-he-didn’t stuff both of these artists trade in.
This, after all, was a partnership between two artists who regularly, gleefully trade in gross-out gestures, whether it’s Beeple’s distended, totemic, naked world leaders or McBride’s perennially potty-mouthed siblings in “The Righteous Gemstones.”
McBride (and a few other evidently staged heckling AI doubters inside and protesters outside) now can rest assured that, while the technology offers a few nifty tricks, AI is no clear and present danger to the genuine, human-produced article.
In the end, Chad’s authoritarian impulses got the better of itself. As screens flashed red and stern with frenetic coding, smoke fumed and black confetti trickled down, the mood shifted from mirth to menace. The two robots reemerged, this time with their robot heads affixed with eerily lifelike replicas of the decapitated heads of McBride and Beeple, gory parts included.
In this case, the buoyant, blustery meeting of creative minds that is “Synthetic Theatre” offered offbeat, illuminating evidence that two heads are better than one. The digitally tricked out, good-natured evening went down easily, and gave my AI-wary soul plenty to chew on.
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