With OPEN BETA, we use generative AI to create a funny, weird, exciting and beautifully strange story. Combining high stakes acrobatics with urgent questions, performances range from big solos to group dance and acrobatic pieces, hula hoops, juggling, aerial disciplines, plus a flame thrower and a mirror suit. Highly programmed digital props are used throughout in combination with exceptional circus. And there’s even a dinosaur.
The purpose of OPEN BETA is not to replace creatives with machines, but to collaborate with them as an equal partner. For example, the music was composed both by Sam West who previously won awards for his music with Chivaree and also with AI tools – some of the music is more Sam, some is entirely AI.
Can the audience discern where the human ends and the AI begins —and if not, does it matter? The same is true for the design, costume, choreography, script, scene ideas. What emerges is like looking at the subconscious of the internet; for if AI is trained on the content we produce, what does it know about us, the people who have created all the information it was programmed on?