is the knowledge-sharing platform for the 

. Explore the experiments and bold ideas behind the Academy's Fellowship programme, delve into the science behind the projects of our HIDA researchers, and explore the results of international collaborations.

is a platform for discovery and documentation. Each 

showcases a unique artistic-technological research project, with topics as diverse as the use of AI in theatrical design, choreography for and with robotics, and the possibilities for theatre in virtual spaces. Each 

 offers the chance to learn more about the members of our artistic research network. By pooling our knowledge in such a way, creative research into theatre, performance and digital technologies can become more accessible, sustainable, and artistically innovative.

Funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation, the Academy will award a total of 54 fellowships between 2019 and 2022, each lasting for five months. The 

 are designed for people interested in artistic-technical research which explores the possibilities for digital narratives in theatrical spaces, as well as their practical implementation. Fellows have researched a variety of digital methods (motion capture, coding, XR, VR, AR, sensor technologies, robotics, and more) across artistic fields including opera, dance, orchestra and drama. 

Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy

(HIDA), the Academy for Theatre and Digitality has offered joint research fellowships at the interface of digital art and cutting edge scientific research since 2021. The HIDA fellowships are kindly supported by the 

Artificial Intelligence

Installation

VR (Virtual Reality)

Puppetry

Interactive

Stage Design

Dance

Sound Design

Theater Dortmund
Theater Karree 1-3
44137 Dortmund
Germany
Fon: +49 (0) 231 226 14330

Address and location of the Academy for Theater and Digitality:
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44147 Dortmund
Germany

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Management Team:

Executive Director
Tobias Ehinger

Administrative Director
Martin Lizan

Director of the Opera
Heribert Germeshausen

Director of the Ballet
Xin Peng Wang

General Music Director
Gabriel Feltz

Artistic Director of the Schauspiel
Julia Wissert

Director of the Children's and Youth Theater
Andreas Gruhn

Director of the Academy for Theatre and Digitality
Marcus Lobbes

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Fellowship

HIDA

discover cutting-edge digital research in theatre and performance 
meet our research fellows and collaborators in the 

Portal: Academy for Theatre and Digitality

Jiayun Zhuang is a writer and dramaturg currently based in the United States and the Netherlands. 

Edwin van Steenbergen is a light designer, set designer, and theatre technician based in the Netherlands.

Together, they are interested in exploring storytelling/storyliving techniques and technological possibilities in theatre and performance. In their research project at the Academy for Theatre and Digitality, entitled 

, they developed a real-time, algorithm-driven, and rewards-optimized installation performance to simulate a post-truth media-political sphere.

Jiayun Zhuang and Edwin van Steenbergen

We have two correlated creative impulses when creating this piece: 

1. To simulate a post-truth digital media environment in which a wealth of content exhausts the attention of its recipients.

2. To channel the kind of unbounded and unguarded generative energy of digital media into our performance, and to create a performative experience of real-time, algorithm-driven, and rewards-optimized content generation.

With what digital theatrical instruments can we use to build up a performance piece, the process of which is “generated” in real-time through the work of algorithms and human improvisations?

How do we bring the audience into the content generation process and, in so doing, play with the logic of media engagement?

How do we work with GPT-3, the OpenAI language generator, and how do we build applications on the GPT-3 platform for the performance piece?

How do we use other applications (e.g., VUO) to create real-time generative theatrics?

How do we build a control system for FXKE via which the audience can engage with the performance digitally?

Fictionalize an AI-powered crowd-reimagining system, FXKE.

 The performance piece is then a series of user guides explaining the system's features, and it brings the users (audience) into the content generation process. The performance script (the user guides given by the central system, and the content of the website for the performance (website as the system's subsidiary facility), are generated by GPT-3 based on prompts.

Build the technical construction of the website for the performance (JavaScript, Python, and HTML), on which a polling system and a GPT-3 powered chatbot are built. 

The audience's chatting data is collected for real-time generative animation. 

The polling system consists of four HTML pages: a controlling page, an audience's page, a page for screens, and a page for performers.

Create visual and sound compositions via VUO that respond to the real-time textual generation from different GPT-3 API

s, then newer contents for the performance are made. These new contents are sent through Syphon, and to QLab, and projected on the screens.

FXKE: Technical Setup

Development Diary

Our project, entitled FXKE, is a performance about the post-truth digital environment active in our current attention economy, an economy that stimulates and prioritizes eyeball-grabbing content to keep users engaged. Through FXKE, we want to reflect upon the compulsive undermining of the infrastructure of truth (a post-truth symptom), and our modern-day condition of information overload. 

RESEARCH PLATFORM

Academy for Theatre and Digitality

Jiayun Zhuang and Edwin van Steenbergen

Writer, Dramaturg, Theatre DesignerFellow

Short Bio

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