dali: Digital Arts Lab, Iscte

The 2023 perfomance/installation AI'topia was a colaborative work between dali, mISCuTEm , Iscte's Academic Tuna , and the independent persons Hugo Alexandre Cruz and João Sousa, addressing the awareness and impacts of AI on people and society, triggered by the advent and dissemination of conversational chats based on Large Language Models, especially chatGPT. It appeared in Iscte's Exhibitions Room, from April/18 to May/02 of 2023.

AI'topia was a installation/performance with three acts, spatially distributed across distinct regions of the exhibition room. The first act - pre artificial intelligence - focused on social and individual anxieties caused by the advent of automation in the first part of the 20th century. The second act - the present of AI - caputures the imense noise of the more through the less informed people, of the more through the less impacted by the comming of age of visible artificial intelligence. The third act offers two alternative futures regarding the interplay of people and AI systems: an utopic future and a dystopic future.

AI'topia was an installation because it was organized according to a narrative the visitants ought to follow:
                      +-->act 3: utopic future
act 1-->act 2--|
                      +-->act 3: dystopic future
It was a performance because, in addition to immutable contents, a multipart theatrical performance and a musical performance were included in the installation. In the event's finissage, both the theatrical and the musical performances were presented live, respectively by the Iscte's theatre group mISCuTEm and by the Iscte's Academic Tuna . During the other days, the theatrical performances were shown in video.