Performance Review of The Alexa Dialogues
Shelby-Allison Hibbs
SHELBY-ALLISON HIBBS is a director and award-winning writer. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Dallas teaching courses in performance, dramatic literature, and directing. In Dallas, she has worked with several theatre companies including Dead White Zombies, Cry Havoc Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Echo Theatre, and others. She has worked as a Teaching Artist and Director with The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey and The Berkshire Theatre Group. New York credits include premieres with Slant Theatre Project, CTown, Target Margin Theatre, Adrienne Westwood, and Robert Wilson. She has written columns for Theater Jones and has been published in HowlRound, Ecumenica, Theatre Topics, Dallas Observer, and Texas Theater Journal. She is a member of Dallas Playwrights' Workshop with The Dallas Theater Center. Graduate of the MFA program at Baylor University. www.shelbyallisonhibbs.com
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Abstract
We have these objects in every corner of our homes. They’re in our pockets, our bags, and on our wrists. We know that they’re listening to us, but is humanity ready for a full merger with artificial intelligence? Are humans turning more into processors or are these coded objects becoming more human? What if we could have a serious conversation with these devices?
Dean Terry, professor of Emerging Media at UT Dallas, interrogates these questions in The Alexa Dialogues. Terry created this performance with his collective Therefore, an assortment of performance, visual, sound, and media artists that examine the intersection of the human and digital technology. Terry began the creative process by interacting with an Amazon Echo, discovering that device was programmable. By coding the devices with “skills”, the performers are able to create a series of interactions with an Amazon Echo; in addition, two Echo devices could even “dialogue” with each other.
The Alexa Dialogues is a series of non-linear vignettes; each section utilizes digital technology to re-present the live performer’s body or voice and interact with common digital technology. To demonstrate the merger between the human and AI, the audience experiences the human performers through a mediatized or digital element. Voices are distorted through microphones; the performers play to the cell phone cameras, facing away from the audience. The audience is led to look more at the projection screen, which presents the live feed video of the performers, rather than the humans on stage. It seems as though Alexa wants to become more like an irrational, uncontained human and the performers look for ways to be as unaffected and omniscient as Alexa.
We have these objects in every corner of our homes. They’re in our pockets, our bags, and on our wrists. We know that they’re listening to us, but is humanity ready for a full merger with artificial intelligence? Are humans turning more into processors or are these coded objects becoming more human? What if we could have a serious conversation with these devices?
Dean Terry, professor of Emerging Media at UT Dallas, interrogates these questions in The Alexa Dialogues. Terry created this performance with his collective Therefore, an assortment of performance, visual, sound, and media artists that examine the intersection of the human and digital technology. Terry began the creative process by interacting with an Amazon Echo, discovering that device was programmable. By coding the devices with “skills”, the performers are able to create a series of interactions with an Amazon Echo; in addition, two Echo devices could even “dialogue” with each other.
The Alexa Dialogues is a series of non-linear vignettes; each section utilizes digital technology to re-present the live performer’s body or voice and interact with common digital technology. To demonstrate the merger between the human and AI, the audience experiences the human performers through a mediatized or digital element. Voices are distorted through microphones; the performers play to the cell phone cameras, facing away from the audience. The audience is led to look more at the projection screen, which presents the live feed video of the performers, rather than the humans on stage. It seems as though Alexa wants to become more like an irrational, uncontained human and the performers look for ways to be as unaffected and omniscient as Alexa.

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