Ellen Pearlman
AIBO: Emotionally Intelligent AI Brainwave Opera
AIBO (Artificial Intelligent Brainwave Opera) is an immersive, interactive love story about our infatuation and trust in artificial intelligence played out between a human character Eva, and AIBO, a custom built ‘sicko’ AI. Eva wears a body suit of light with her live time EEG brainwaves displayed as colors on her body, akin to an exterior nervous system. She intones a libretto about their love affair. Her brainwaves trigger databanks of videos and audio of emotionally themed memories. Eva’s libretto is uploaded to the computing cloud and processed by the custom built ‘sicko’ AIBO, who responds to her entreaties. Its’ responses are analyzed by a separate AI for their synthesized emotional meaning, and this meaning launches separate databanks of sound and video. AIBO raises issues about a time when humans and machines potentially merge consciousness, and explores if AIs can create memory through databanks that emulate human emotion.
AIBO at STARTS Residencies Days, Paris
Noor: A Brain Opera : Is There A Place In Human Consciousness Where Surveillance Cannot Go?
Noor is the world's first interactive immersive brain opera in a 360-degree theater. A performer's emotions launch databanks of video, a sonic environment, and a libretto as the audience watches her brainwaves livetime. Based on the true story of Noor Inayat Khan, a Russian born, European raised Sufi Muslim Princess whose father Hazrat Inayat Khan brought Sufism to the West. During WW II she became a covert wireless operator for British Intelligence by parachuting deep inside occupied Vichy ruled France. For a period of three months Noor (code name “Nora”) was the only communications link transmitting critical information back to the Allies. Caught by the Gestapo, who were unable to break her to find out any information about her transmission cell, Noor was shot inside the infamous Dachau prison shortly before the end of the war. Noor is a metaphor for issues of surveillance, privacy and consciousness.