Prometheus Firebringer

Nomination

anniedorsen.com/projects/prometheus-firebringer

Prometheus Firebringer is a lecture-performance about generative AI, technology and power. On the performance side, the predictive text model GPT-4 generates speculative versions of the lost final play of Aeschylus’ Prometheia trilogy. Each night, a chorus of AI-generated Greek masks performs a new iteration. On the lecture side, Dorsen delivers a talk made up entirely of snippets of other texts, quoted verbatim.

In ancient Greek mythology, Prometheus stole the gods’ fire and gave it to humans—sparking sudden and dramatic advances in technology and the arts, and dramatic new sources of conflict. His story is told in the 2500-year-old Prometheia trilogy attributed to Aeschylus, of which only Prometheus Bound remains in full.

How do we decide to act when we can’t trust what we read, or see? And what do our choices even mean in a techno-epistemological world controlled by a select few, especially when its workings remain a mystery? These questions inspire this new lecture-performance, which continues Dorsen’s 15-year practice of using performance to explore the ambiguous impacts of technology.

Credits

Writer, director, performer: Annie Dorsen
Sound design: Ian Douglas-Moore
Video and systems design: Ryan Holsopple
Lighting design, technical direction: Ruth Waldeyer
Software design and programming: Sukanya Aneja
Voice prints: Okwui Okpokwasili, Livia Reiner
3D artist: Harry Kleeman
Dramaturgy: Tom Sellar
Producer: Natasha Katerinopoulos

Original support for Prometheus Firebringer was provided to Bryn Mawr College by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia. Prometheus Firebringer is supported in part by commissions from New York Live Arts’ Live Feed Residency Program with additional support from Partners for New Performance, and Media Art Xploration’s MAXmachina laboratory funded in part by Science Sandbox. The piece was developed with the support of the Eureka Commissions program created by Onassis Foundation, and the Mercury Store.

Biography

Annie Dorsen (US) is a director and writer whose works explore the intersection of algorithmic art and live performance. Most recently, Prometheus Firebringer was presented at Theatre For a New Audience. Other algorithmic performances, including Infinite Sun (2018), The Great Outdoors (2017), Yesterday Tomorrow (2015), A Piece Of Work (2013) and Hello Hi There (2010), have been widely presented in the US and internationally. The script for A Piece Of Work was published by Ugly Duckling Presse, and she has contributed essays for The Drama Review, Theatre Magazine, Performing Arts Journal (PAJ), and others. Dorsen has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Herb Alpert Award for the Arts in Theatre.