The System Cannot Fail

The digital lab of the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen (MiR.LAB) is a venue of experimentation for new forms of music theatre. For their new production “The System Cannot Fail”, artistic director Nora Krah and the MIR.LAB team are working together with the New York guest artist Ellen Pearlman. In this interactive AI music theatre project, the artists explore how memory and identity unfold in bodies, code and collective imagination, and how an AI system can shape this process in real time and make it visible. 
The central artistic premise is that AI systems also develop a form of subconsciousness, e.g. via instable filter mechanisms or so-called “hallucinated” content. Specific AI phenomena, such as “catastrophic forgetting” – the abrupt loss of learned information – when new information is gained, or “LOAB” – visual artefacts that evade filters and appear in neural networks – serve as the starting points for the scenic examination of machine-based memory and identity-building. The artistic team will create an open, dynamic production format with an adaptive AI system as part of the performance. The narrative and musical structure is not linearly predetermined but rather evolves in interplay with real-time data. The audience itself influences the events on stage, e.g. via movements and language. The AI system acts as a fellow performer that can influence, learn, contradict and remember.
The premiere will take place in autumn 2027 at the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen. Even during the rehearsal phase, the public will have the opportunity to learn more about the project in workshops, work-in-progress performances, university partnerships and discussion series.