WORKSHOP
Friday, March 29th, Transforma Theatre will offer a FREE public workshop in Media and Technology Literacy.
This workshop will create a highly participatory and playful modality — encouraging personal curiosity, agency, and investigation — around the sometimes scary, often misunderstood, and easily hyped topic of Artificial Intelligence. As part of the workshop, participants will interact with GPT-4 via an avatar, so that they can ask it questions directly. There will also be a guided tour through a few different contemporary AI tools.
Transforma was in residence at NACL last summer and shared selections from their work BIOADAPTED which subsequently premiered at Culture Lab LIC in NYC. They will be in residence again this year from March 25th through April 7th working on the sequel called AI Hallucinations. You can see selections of this new work at NACL on April 5th. Read more about AI Hallucinations…
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Transforma Theatre is a New York based not-for-profit with a mission to create interactive theatrical experiences at the convergence of consciousness, science, and ritual.
Transforma's first piece was The Female Role Model Project (FRMP) using EEG headsets on stage to investigate contemporary gender structures from the perspective of four completely different female-identifying devisers sharing their autobiographical stories through a series of interactive games. FRMP was produced Off-Broadway in NYC's premier hub for arts and technology, Three-Legged Dog (3LD) and at Bedlam Theatre, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe 2019. It received an Honorable Mention in the Creativity category of Fast Company's World Changing Ideas Awards and a nomination for the outstanding innovative design at New York Innovative Theatre Awards. The show has been called “gender-and generation-transcending,” was included in “Best 23 Shows of Edinburgh Fringe” by inews and lauded as “thought-provoking, GROUNDBREAKING WORK" by Fringe Review.
In 2021, Transforma created and produced the sold-out Science in Theatre Festival (SIT) with 24 artists and 12 scientists participating. The Festival welcomed 400 in-person attendees (and 40 online) at The Cell Theatre in Manhattan and was featured in Forbes and American Theatre Magazine. In 2022, SIT moved to a larger venue and featured scientists from South Korea, The Netherlands, Israel, and the US, some of whom are currently subjects of a new documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Wagner.
In 2023 Transforma brought to the stage BIOADAPTED, an investigative documentary theatre reenactment, with actors portraying real people and scientists, paired with humorous and eerie fictional pieces. In the grand finale, the audience puts GPT-4 on trial and interrogates it directly in real time. The New York Times called it "maverick creativity" and "sleekly designed, thoughtfully assembled."
Transforma’s Public Workshop on Media and Technology Literacy is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Photo by Dinara Khairova