LIVE FROM THE BLACK BOX!
A DIY, live-streamed glimpse into the black boxes of AI computation, scientific theory, experimental theatre, and weird pedagogies.
Tune in to THE hallucinatory experiment in seeing what remains to be (un)seen!
Learning Machines: Live from the Black Box! is an experimental, one-hour ‘TV’ show exploring the weird interfaces between artificial intelligence, human learning, and pedagogical fabulation. Broadcast on February 8, 2024, from Concordia University’s Black Box Theatre, the show was the culmination of a week-long research-creation residency where we—learning machines ourselves—collaboratively devised a series of high-concept/low-fi performances that stretched the limits of what teaching and thinking with AI might become.
Staged as a pedagogical hallucination, Live from the Black Box! invited viewers into the underworld of AI systems—their energetic demands, recursive loops, and glitched logics. Drawing inspiration from computational infrastructures, collective improvisation, and the atmospheric vibes of public access TV, Live from the Black Box! segments included:
Black Box Storytime. An interactive felt-board fable for the computational age.
Weathering AI: An Energy Report. A surreal weather report meets spoken-word performance, this piece visualized the invisible energetic and extractive infrastructures behind everyday AI tasks—like generating a dinner recipe.
The Game of Consciousness. Broadcast from a faux-infomercial set, this segment introduced a fabricated board game for recursive cognition, complete with shimmering props, looping rules, and warped time.
Cinematic Visions. A lo-fi supercut of ’80s and ’90s film clips that visualize artificial intelligences.
The Doomy/Dreamy Quiz. A hot-take-fueled game show inviting audience members to weigh in on real AI news—slop content, chatbot crushes, pain-detecting machines. Dreamy or doomy?
George, Our Interviewer in the Void. AI-generated interviews with a stiff (but enthusiastic!) virtual host named George, floating in digital space and asking eerily good questions.
This event is made possible by so many incredible folks! Special thanks to AJ Little for the poster design, Catlin W. Kuzyk for the sound engineering, Mark Baehr and the fine folks at the CDA (Concordia) for help with gear, and the Faculty of Fine Arts (Concordia).