Annie Dorsen: Hello Hi There (2010)
Annie Dorsen: Hello Hi There. Photo by W Silveri.
About
Hello Hi There uses the famous television debate between the philosopher Michel Foucault and linguist/activist Noam Chomsky from the Seventies as inspiration and material for a dialogue between two custom-designed chatbots: every evening, these computer programs, designed to mimic human conversations, perform a new – as it were, improvised – live text.
As Chomsky and Foucault debate language, creativity, the roots of scientific discovery and the nature of political power, the chatbots talk on and on, endlessly circling the questions of the debate, and frequently veering off into unexpected, at times nonsensical, digressions. Purposely low-tech, the chatbots remind us of the optimism of the late 60s/early 70s, when natural language programming was thought to soon crack the code of human language production. This optimism in the face of repeated failure echoes the dynamic in the politics of Chomsky and Foucault -- reflecting a similarly fading optimism in the possibility of people to remake our world.
Credits
Concept and Direction: Annie Dorsen
Production design: Kate Howard
Systems design: Jeff Gray
Scenography and Lighting design: Edward Pierce
Chatbot software design: Robby Garner
Consultation: Nicolas Siepen and Berno Odo Polzer
Assistance: Stephen Brackett
Technical Management: Cyd Cahill
General Management: Lisa Schmidt
Production Management: Alexandra Rosenberg
Hello Hi There was co-produced by steirischer herbst (Graz), Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Black Box Teater (Oslo), and Performance Space 122 (NYC). Hello Hi There was developed in part at Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC); Troy, NY
Performance History
September 24-26 2010 | Steirischer Herbst | Graz, Austria
November 4-6, 2010 | Black Box Teater | Oslo, Norway
November 11-13, 2010 | BIT Teatergarasjen | Bergen, Norway
November 18-19, 2010 | Hebbel am Ufer | Berlin, Germany
January 6-22, 2011 | Performance Space 122 COIL Festival | New York, NY
February 26, 2011 | Phaenomenale Festival | Wolfsburg, Germany
July 10-11, 2011 | Sommerszene | Salzburg, Austria
August 22-24, 2011 | Noorderzon Festival | Groningen, The Netherlands
February 18, 2012 | Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) | Troy, NY
July 25, 2012 | Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence | Toronto, Canada
October 31, 2012 | 4+4 Days in Motion Festival | Prague, Czech Republic
November 27, 2012 | Bard Live Arts | Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
January 26, 2014 | Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center | Cincinnati, OH
March 28-29, 2013 | Théâtre le Granit | Belfort, France
April 10, 2013 | SIANA Festival | Évry, France
May 30 - June 20, 2013 | Bitforms Gallery | New York, NY
August 28, 2013 | Augusti TantsuFestival | Tallinn, Estonia
November 18-19, 2013 | Théâtre La Villette | Paris, France
February 16-17, 2016 | Kaaitheater | Brussels, Belgium
Selected Press
“Hello Hi There is one of those profoundly original performances that, while straightaway breaking with certain conventions of theatre, manages to nourish the definition of it....Hello Hi There creates a paradigm shift.”
– Marion Siéfert, La Souffleur
“Annie Dorsen’s brilliantly conceived Hello Hi There pits two chatbots—robots without physical bodies—against each other in a highly ironic contest of wits... This is not just more digital formalism onstage: Hello Hi There is a genuine experiment with many currents coursing through its post-Socratic dialogue. By putting her bots center stage, Dorsen generates rare intellectual stimulation for the downtown performance world—humans beware.”
– Tom Seller, The Village Voice
“Dead doesn’t necessarily mean as a dodo, however. That’s the message suggested by the two chatbots (talking computer programs) in Annie Dorsen’s brilliant stage play Hello Hi There, premiered at the Steirischer Herbst. Amazingly, there are no live performers; the American director allows her two bots to philosophise about a discussion which took place between the philosophers Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky. The dialogue, generated by algorithms, is sometimes truly ludicrous -- fundamentally, though, it’s extremely sinister.
– Helmut Ploebst, Der Standard