System Failed – ArtesMobiles

Try Out and performative workshop
Industriegelände – Werner-Hartmann-Straße, Dresden

Join in and actively shape digitalisation!

SystemFailed is a participatory performance that deals with structures of power in the “smart” age. Algorithmic government techniques are made tangible in a playful way and a critical examination of digitalisation is initiated. The performance examines how artificial intelligence – i.e. statistical analysis, machine learning and computer vision – influences our social behaviour.

Three performers and a self-developed AI system, represented by moving light and projections, face the audience. The audience can influence the course of the action. Their movement behaviour is analysed by the AI through video tracking, evaluated by a decision logic and the decisions are played back to the audience via projection and light.

We encourage our audience to engage with the use of AI and to position themselves on ethical questions: How can the danger of a norm-compliant society controlled by programmed objects that always act correctly and compelling architectures be countered? How can digitalisation contribute to more equal opportunities and democracy?

ArtesMobiles was founded by Nina Maria Stemberger (direction, performance) and Birk Schmithüsen (media art) in Leipzig in 2012. We stage audiovisual theatre performances, look for ways to dissolve academic categories and break down the demarcation between art, theatre and technology.

Nina Maria Stemberger is a performance artist, choreographer, theatre and dance teacher. She is co-founder of the performance group ArtesMobiles. In her work, she repeatedly asks herself how art in public space can be an integral part of the development of future perspectives and how it can be shaped.

Birk Schmithüsen is a media artist whose work is shown internationally at important media art festivals such as re:publica, the Chaos Communication Congress, the Ars Electronica Festival and the ZKM. In aesthetic experiments, he explores imperceptible abstract concepts such as machine learning (AI) and BigData as artistic media. By creating dynamic systems with life-like behaviour, he opens up new perspectives on current topics of digitalisation.