Digital Works Podcast
Talking about all the different things that 'digital' means in the arts, culture and heritage sectors. Tales of success and failure, interrogating the shiny new things and looking at what works (or not) and why, Interviews with digital folks working across the sector and beyond, in-house, consultants, funders, and more.
Digital Works Podcast
Brandon Powers on dance, technology, immersive experiences, reframing the role of the audience, working with engineers, and the importance of translation
A chat with New York-based creative director and choreographer, Brandon Powers. Brandon works with technology to create experiences across physical and virtual spaces.
We talked about his early experiences with technology, inter-disciplinary teams, the various ways that technology and virtual spaces can enhance and extend experiences for both artists and audiences, rethinking audience agency in the work he's been doing on Fortnite, and loads more.
If you're interested in hearing from someone who sits neatly at the intersection between performance, storytelling, technology, and experience design, then this one is for you.
You can find more about Brandon's work on his website https://www.brandon-powers.com/
Hello and welcome to the Digital Works podcast, the podcast about digital stuff in the cultural sector. I'm Ash, your host, and each episode we explore how people and organisations in the cultural world and beyond are using digital to create, connect and adapt. And if you need a hand with your own digital work, I'm also a consultant who helps cultural organizations make the most of all this stuff. In today's episode, I'm joined by Brandon Powers. Brandon is a creative director and choreographer who works with technology to create experiences across physical and virtual spaces.
Speaker 1:I first came across Brandon's work on LinkedIn of all places, where I saw a really inspiring and interesting example of a prototype he built that generated video based on someone's movement in a space. I thought it was a really interesting and creative example of those technologies in use. Brandon has done a lot of work creating immersive experiences, virtual experiences, putting technology into physical experiences. I think he's got a really interesting perspective on how technology can be used to enhance traditional forms of culture and create new virtual ways for audiences and artists to be able to meet each other Enjoy. Thank you so much for joining me today, brandon. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Of course, thanks for having me. We'll start as I do all of these conversations with your background, you know what is the Brandon Powers story look like. How have you made your way through your career to today?
Speaker 2:major way through your career to today, for sure. So I often say that it was a slippery slope or kind of a snowball rolling down a hill. When it comes to explaining how I went from, you know, being a young person growing up in New York City and exposed to lots of theater and dance and started dancing originally when I was in, you know, fifth grade to now working with all sorts of different immersive technologies, you know. So it all started there. You know my background is in contemporary dance, and modern dance fused together with, actually, hip hop is where I first started, and jazz and that kind of kept building and building. I was given access to choreography and theater directing at a very young age and I was really excited about what it meant to be kind of a leader in sort of theatrical spaces. And then that fused together in college with Devise Theater working under Michael Rode, who's an amazing leader in the, the device theater and kind of social practice fields here in the States, and then kind of that went further into exploring work in the immersive space. But the last project I worked on in college actually was with Google Glass, and this was, you know, very early on when that was. You know what was like. What the heck are we going to do with these things that no one really wants? And I was building a project that was a combination or collaboration between the theater department and the engineering school and we were trying to develop this experience where actors would be watching or would receive lines in real time in their glasses that were being scraped from the internet in order to create theatrical experiences. You know like what would Romeo and Juliet look like, but extremely hyper localized to, you know, evanston, illinois, based on conversations people were having on Reddit. Yahoo answers, you know, at the time. So my job was to think really structurally and dramaturgically and say, okay, what if we are trying to open up Romeo and Juliet? Right, there's that prologue. We need a chunk of text that explores two sides that don't get along and like a conflict, and we would pull that in from the internet and then send that into folks' glasses. And that was the first moment that really taught me that my brain works in a very structural way and that I'm really good at this idea of translation between different fields and between different types of creators, which I think really sets up the next, you know, 15 years of my life, and that's why, like, really all emerged from that moment.
Speaker 2:And then, kind of coming out of school, I was doing a lot of immersive theater work, building a lot of immersive work. That technology was in many ways like the topic of conversation, as opposed to necessarily infused into the work, because I've always been really fascinated with how it affects our culture and how we connect to other people. Particularly early on, it was conversations about social media and online dating and kind of the distancing and the types of versions of ourselves we create online. And then I started working with Lance Weiler over at the Columbia University Digital Storytelling Lab, who does these amazing kind of open access events where he introduces people to all sorts of different technologies and allows them to just play together in these kind of free events that happen monthly, and I started going to a lot of those and we were working together and he was developing very early AI projects, first with IBM Watson, and I started to help him with that project.
Speaker 2:And then a new project emerged called Frankenstein AI, which was going to Sundance, and so I became a part of that team in 2018. And from there, that's really where things started to accelerate, because it was this moment where folks working in AI and then ultimately in VR as well, were shifting their lens and focus from oh we really need filmmakers for this work to oh we really need theater makers and dance makers. And I was in a really amazing place at the perfect time, because things I was sharing with folks about just my own experience was resonating exponentially very quickly, because everyone needed to understand how to move through space and how to really capture people and make them feel embodied, and that's exactly what I'm, would, expert in. So it kind of worked out. And so then things kept growing from there and started making all sorts of different work across all sorts of different mediums over, you know, the several years to follow from there.
Speaker 1:Amazing. That's such a great story and there's a couple of things you mentioned there that I'd love to dig into a little bit more. First, you know, this project that you mentioned where there's a load of theatre people working with a load of engineering school people, I think is an interesting, especially at that time. That must have been quite a sort of oil and water mix of perspectives and skills and ways of thinking. And that word that you mentioned, translation, has come up time and time again whenever I've talked to people that have worked on sort of multidisciplinary teams, that the importance of being able to quickly either translate or arrive at some sort of shared language so that everyone is actually using the same words to say the same things. Would you say that the project you were originally describing was over 10 years ago. Would you say that the role of translating and the role of language on these projects is still important to sort of unlocking their potential, getting technology, people and, I suppose, more traditional cultural practitioners to be able to work successfully together.
Speaker 2:Yes, no, absolutely. Translation, I think, is the most important part of this work that we do, right? Part of what I love about the field that I work in I guess it's like the multiplicity of fields that I work in, across immersive tech and theater and dance and live performance, etc is that everyone working in this space is an orphan from another field to a degree. Right, because not until very recently really are. Now we're learning. Students are coming out of university with an immense amount of knowledge in how to make a VR experience, how to work with AI in a creative context. There's great courses about that. Now. That's very, very, very new, right? So all the folks that I've been working with have even trailblazers in the field that have been doing this for a couple decades. They are from somewhere else too, right? So we have architects, we have choreographers, we have actors, we have creative coders, we have web designers, we have folks in advertising. It's just all sorts of different fields, which I think what makes the work really exciting, because you're meeting a lot of different people. Everyone has very different perspectives. But then you also begin to realize that oftentimes you're trying to accomplish the same goal or say the same thing, but you literally just say a different word to mean that right. And so I lead lots of workshops around this very specific challenge because I've seen it many, many times when I've been in conversations.
Speaker 2:I worked with a prominent theater company here in the States when they were exploring VR for the first time. This was during the pandemic, and I was brought in a little bit later in the process because they were trying to figure out, like, what's going wrong here or like, how do we like we're trying to make this a little bit work, a little bit better, but we don't really know what's going, what the problem is. And after just one conversation, I, from talking to both sides and sitting in the middle, I realized one group of people thought they were making a, you know, 360 non-interactive VR experience and another group thought they were making a six degrees of freedom, fully interactive, live theatrical piece in VR. And this was week like six of the process. And I was like, whoa, okay, like this is why, right, when you say the word 3D or when you say the word interactive or when you say the word immersive, right, we need to actually understand what we mean by these very general terms, potentially right. Or you know, when someone who's not as familiar with you know VR says 3D, they imagine like 3D glasses when they go to see, you know, lord of the Rings, right? So that really is what is so important to make sure that we're all on the same page.
Speaker 2:And I've actually found, and I teach using, I've created this methodology called embodiment design that I use to help teach this, to help create more embodied experiences, and it's based in Laban, movement analysis, which is something that you know, anyone who has a dance education is really familiar with. But I find that the language associated with Laban is really fantastic for translation, because it allows us to understand together. Oh, when I say that this should feel this way, we now have a shared vocabulary for it. That's maybe new to both of us or new to one of us, but I've explained it in a really clear way, right? Or, oh, I want this to have a sense of. You know, the participant should be like slashing with their controller, right, which is much more specific than saying, oh, they moved their controller through the space, right, because that could mean anything. So, yeah, I think it's really all about translation.
Speaker 1:And I want to talk a little bit now maybe about, well, actually, the way in which I first came across your work, which was in the extremely unromantic, non-sexy scenario of coming across it on LinkedIn. I don't know, maybe you or someone had posted a video of a generative engine, individual components of it, you know, motion capture, generative video, blah, blah, blah were not inherently novel in and of themselves, but what really struck me was the way in which you'd executed these ideas in a really beautiful way and it just felt so striking and I'm interested in because I know as well, you've done a lot of work in sort of purely virtual spaces, but maybe if we could talk a bit about the work that you've done, that is, again, we don't have that.
Speaker 1:I don't have the vocabulary to accurately describe it. It's technology enhancing and, in person, physical performance. Could you talk a bit about your practice in that area? Because I just to me, it really struck me as something that was objectively a beautiful application of a lot of quite complex technological ideas.
Speaker 2:For sure. Yeah, no, I really appreciate that. So the project you're referencing is Connectifusion, which is a solo dance performance and interactive installation that I started developing with my collaborator, aaron Santiago, in spring of 2022, actually. So we were at the very beginning of seeing what was happening with AI image generation. You know, this is long before any video models, really long before anyone could do anything besides create, you know, simple images with DALI, you know, or with stable diffusion, but that took an immense amount of, you know, technical knowledge, not, you know, at time of recording. We just got the new ChatGPT image model and everything has changed, you know. But we really wanted to create an experience where we were helping to educate the audience and show them what was all about to happen, because we understood, kind of, how massive of a moment it was, that we were kind of stepping forward into the speed of image generation, and so we created this experience that kind of tells the story of this choreographer encountering AI, and we've built this system where there is the dancer on stage dancing in front of a camera and that camera is feeding into our custom image generation system that's built using stable diffusion and it's able to create real time AI images that we play at a very high frame rate, so it essentially looks like video. And our system has a really advanced queuing capability so we're able to time up different movements with different cues and changes in the prompts of the AI. So we know when she makes a certain movement, the prompt will go from making her look like she's on the beach to then looking like she's in a cave, and that tension that lives and happens is really special and also creates these really amazing theatrical moments, right, that you're talking about, because it's not just, oh, I'm dancing in front of this screen and whatever's happening, you know, there's actually a connection between what the dancer is doing and what's happening on the screen and it naturally creates story and emotion.
Speaker 2:Because we can do what we do best, as you know, artists, which is, and especially choreographers, right, I talk all the time about you know, where you don't just make dance moves, right, we are understanding of how to move people through space. We're understanding how to set up structure dramaturgically, right, and so my skill is allowing us to make meaning out of this technology, right, and we find that dance, I think, is a particularly impactful way for folks to get to know lots of different immersive technologies, but in particular, ai, because it is such a distancing technology, right, it makes us feel like we're losing control over the world, so to center it back into our body is really powerful, and so that's why, besides just the dance, we have this installation side of it, where the audience then gets to try the technology for themselves before and after performances and they learn about AI prompting and then they move their body and they see how different movement styles correlate to different AI prompts really well, and that really helps people feel like, oh, I'm in control, right, and I understand it, because I'm getting this like embodied education in the tool. And we found that to be, you know, really successful and, you know, to your point. I think, at the end of the day, this is one example of it, but I really care about making performance that couldn't exist without the technology right, and I think that's the real important point here, that it's not just about like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if, right? Or like it's cool, like AI is hot, like let's, you know, have, just like AI images move around the space. It's like, no, like the choreography was 100% inspired and created in front of the AI camera every single time right.
Speaker 2:And the movement we perform we've chosen because it's rendered out by the AI in a very particular way to evoke a certain style and emotion and feeling. There's moments where, you know, the dancer is almost like in duet, with the visual on screen, you know. So that piece couldn't exist without it, right? If she was just performing alone, it would be a pretty boring and wouldn't make any sense as a performance. You know, and I think that really is where my brain goes all the time when I'm making something new, and I think that helps people understand the why we're exploring this work and also begins to help people understand why it's important and why we're not replacing anyone. With the work, right, we're actually allowing for all sorts of new performances and experiences to exist that couldn't before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's really interesting and, I think, important that you've identified it as this sort of it being the technology as a sort of multiplier or, you know, an equal part of your artistic thinking, and that you're not just trying to take something that existed already and shove it through a technological lens or, just as you said, come up with something that feels trite.
Speaker 1:However, that sounds like possibly a complex level of competence to arrive at, potentially because you've just explained, you've got 15 plus years working with this sort of stuff, you're very comfortable with technology. You've got a deep rooting in dance practice and a deep rooting in technological practice, so you can absolutely see the point at which both of these things can combine in a really powerful way. But maybe for artistic decision makers, artistic leaders, cultural practitioners, who don't have that technological background, how can they maybe say and this is a very big question the answer in five minutes, but did you have a sense of how they can start to move towards confidence and move towards being able to have conversations where the technology does fulfill a meaningful and important role, rather than it feeling unknowable?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know I mentioned earlier that I lead lots of different workshops and I travel all over the place. You know, tackling this question for folks, right, because I really want to empower artists and folks from the cultural all sorts of different cultural sectors that may feel really scared about working with technology or like it's distant from them or they don't quite have a handle on it and help them understand that actually they have the answers within them. You know, to not make it sound too corny and self-help style, but this field needs those people just as much as it needs the folks that are coding. And I love teaching workshops, going to people and saying, hey, dance maker, hey, you know, artistic director, you have a unique way of viewing the world and you understand how to bring people together. You're really really good at this translation idea, because that's what theater training is, right. You understand how to create a really well-facilitated moment, whether that's an event or a performance piece on stage, right. And these are all the things that the XR and immersive fields are struggling with. They're trying to understand how do we sell tickets? Oh well, we have theatrical models that we've been doing for hundreds of years. That's interesting. Oh, how do we get people to feel like they're not uncomfortable moving around in a headset. Oh, we're dance makers who have been learning how to move people's bodies for thousands of years and the technology field doesn't realize that we exist, literally.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's kind of to the point of where I started in this is I would be having these really basic conversations about what theater people and dance people do with folks in the technology field and it was like whoa, oh my God, like you can do that, because it's just like such a non-understanding of how we're powerful, and that's especially true here. You know, I'm from the States I live in New York. I think it's especially true here because there's not really a culture around supporting the arts societally in the way that there probably is more of in Europe, and so people just like genuinely don't understand, like, what a choreographer's job is. They just like think the dance appears on TikTok magically and that's it. And so, you know, I really think that those folks have the tool sets already and then, once you make that realization, or have that realization, the next big thing to do is just to try as much as you possibly can. You know, that's how I got started in this.
Speaker 2:I don't have any sort of formal background in any of the technology side. I just decided like, hey, I think I'd really enjoy this. I always kind of like I was interested in technology and our culture, and then I had that early experience with Google Last. I said, oh, I think my brain works in a different way than other artists does and I didn't really realize that until I was trying it. So I just put as many headsets on my face as possible over a short period of time and you know artists and you know artistic directors and staff members, et cetera, like they see a ton of performance, right.
Speaker 2:And then that's how they create their taste. It's the exact same thing, right? I just saw a ton of work and it taught me their taste. It's the exact same thing, right? I just saw a ton of work and it taught me, oh, this worked really well. This didn't work well, why? Oh, because they had me interact in this way and that felt terrible. That will become clear to folks, I think, much quicker than they might realize. Then you'll be off to the races in terms of starting to create your own work, and you'll be off to the races in terms of starting to create your own work and then you're able to, you know, reach out for help, find the right teams that make sense. Think about this translation idea and then you know you can really be building in it and you know, create a successful, you know, collaboration.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it does always surprise me how many artistic practitioners have never put on an immersive headset, have never played a video game, have never really engaged with an artistic online experience. And, as you say, you're not going to be able to build any confidence or build the ability to engage with this stuff unless you have some context to inform that viewpoint.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that if you're working at any institution like that, it's extremely important, regardless of even if you decide you want to make a VR piece or not, or want to make with AI or not, a program that you know in your seasons, because it's what a lot of people are doing, and right now, a lot of people are experiencing the world, especially young people. You know, younger audiences are completely digitally native and they're the ones filling, you know, meta horizons. You know and are playing in all sorts of different spaces and playing gorilla tag in VR every day and are. You know I'm working in on a new project right now that launched here in the spring of 25. And it's all in Fortnite and live streaming.
Speaker 2:And you know, I've been sharing this idea of Fortnite as a theatrical space with different, you know, theatrical producers saying like, hey, guys, like you invest all this money in a Broadway show, I'm asking for one 10th of that and we're going to have have, like we could have exponentially more audiences, like tens of millions of people are playing Fortnite at any given second, you know, and that is like how people are experiencing the world right now. So I think it's responsible to better understand that, regardless of you creating the medium, because it's going to then inform how you program Othello even at your theater, because you're like, oh wow, people like to interact in this way. Maybe we could just like build some sort of program that allows people to want to do that and then come see the live performance.
Speaker 1:You know, I'd really love to talk more about the project that you just mentioned, because you know we've just talked about technology enhanced in-person physical experiences, where the technology is adding a layer, but you are going to a venue, you are maybe one or part of an audience. It has maybe more similarities with a traditional mode of cultural experience, but the work that you're doing that's completely in Fortnite experience. But the work that you're doing that's completely in Fortnite, that is completely online. That feels like the types of experience that this sort of quote unquote. Traditional cultural organizations are much less comfortable engaging with conversations around, could you?
Speaker 1:tell us a bit more about what that work is, how and why you ended up making theater at Fortnite.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely so. This project is called Theater Royale and it is a blend of gaming culture, live streaming and interactive theater, and the conceit is that there are actors playing Fortnite on a live stream while also performing a play, and the audience needs to keep them alive via interactions in the chat as well as by joining their squad in Fortnite with us and like literally protecting us like our guardians, so they like act like bodyguards in the game for us so that the actors can continue to perform the play, and so it is very silly and very hectic and a very good time. And this really all emerged from one my real interest in Fortnite as a platform and also being as an extremely online person. You know, I've made a lot of work that involves the internet and I also run a company that does a lot of consulting for TikTok and, you know, helping theater producers understand how to build more multi-platform experiences outside the physical theater theater, because I really believe that helps drive people to the physical theater. We just seem to meet people where they are, and that'll make them less scared to come to the actual building, and so this project was, in many ways, a case study for that, because a lot of producers are saying like, oh, that's interesting, but like I don't have a line item for this thing because it's not the way we've been doing it for a hundred years, and I'm trying to say, oh no, if you actually move this money from this commercial, that's really not doing you anything. And you're getting charged like $200,000 to make this silly commercial and give me like $10,000. Like I could do so much more with that money, you know. And so it was a little bit of that.
Speaker 2:And then also this fascination with Fortnite, and I've kind of see Fortnite as the modern day Agora of ancient Greece, right, this place where folks all gather together. It is the community center, and that's also where the original Dynation festivals emerged from and where theater was born. And so that, to me, is what Fortnite is. It's where all sorts of people are coming together. It's not just a game anymore, it's where people actually just like to hang out. They see these epic concerts that happen every couple months in the game, and so to me, that is the perfect place to be creating performance. So that's where the people are.
Speaker 2:And you know, we've been talking a lot about, especially here in the States, about this idea of like the quote, unquote. Death of the American theater and you know, no one's coming to shows anymore. Literally keep the theater alive by shooting other people in a game is to me very evocative and I don't need people to really get that. That's exactly what's happening. Like I talk about the project in a very different way to folks like you and to you know institutions, than I talk about it to my audience. To my audience. I'm like audience. I'm like we got this crazy Fortnite challenge and like it's really silly and we need your help. And I don't bring up anything to do with theater because I don't want to scare them away. And it's really successful. You know, because of that and I love to make work where the audience interactive point is like a, a essentially we're staging the metaphor of the piece, if that makes sense, right? So if the piece is about how the theater is dying and how we need to save it, asking the audience to literally keep it alive by, like, protecting us with their weapons, to me is like that's the point. It's actually nothing like. Oh, people are like what plays are you doing? I'm like I actually don't really care if people think they're watching a play. The play is just happening and the action of this is actually the interaction between a random stranger and our actors, and so there's so much possibility, you know, for folks to connect with performance and institutions in new ways that are unexpected to them but are also very comfortable with what they do every day. Right, people are watching Twitch all the time.
Speaker 2:We're in a moment especially at this exact moment where it's becoming really exponentially popular, especially Fortnite, and so I do believe that it's, in many ways, a gateway drug for people to then want to go to the theater Grand Theft Auto and other places. Like, you're making theater, you're just not calling it that and that's okay. Like I actually strongly believe we need to like stop calling a lot of theater theater and people will like it, and so this is my attempt, a little bit at that, and I think it shows that you can reach audiences in new ways and that a big part of my company is trying to help people understand that producers are not and theater owners, et cetera. They're not simply just curators of their building or real estate owners, but they're actually heads of media companies. That's actually where we are now, and I think maybe 1% of the world's field understands that at this moment and my kind of life's mission is to help that number rise, because you have a tremendous amount of power and influence on the culture, regardless of how people, how much they realize it.
Speaker 2:And you don't need them to just come to your building that they're used to coming to right. And you don't need them to just come to your building that they're used to coming to right, they can still like. What does it mean to have a, you know, lincoln Center experience on their computer at home? You know what does it mean to have a national theater experience, you know, in VR. All that does is actually build up the reputation of your organization because it'll make them then trust you to kind of go and travel and attend the location I was nodding furiously at what you were saying there and I mean I'd love to talk a little bit more about audiences.
Speaker 1:but for specifically the audiences you've been performing to with with this theater roy piece, do you have any sense of who those people are and what has the reaction interaction been like? Has it?
Speaker 2:surprised you. It's been wild and it's been really exciting. You know, it's quite diverse, I think, in a way that you actually don't typically get in live performance, especially here in the States. I've wanted to really focus especially on younger audiences, especially like teenagers and like teenage boys, honestly, because I think that they're an audience that has been left behind actually a little bit in the last decade and they love Fortnite and it's a really great way to connect with folks.
Speaker 2:And so we've been playing with this amazing middle schooler named Sasha, who's so cool, whose parents are being very kind to let him join the stream and he's having a great time and he's also like obsessed with, like Greek mythology and we're doing mostly Greek plays right now, and so we were like today we're doing Elektra and he's like, oh my God, that's the woman who's blah, blah, blah. And we're like that's right, sasha, and he's having such an amazing time, you know, with us and we love that. But then also, we just had two strangers who just came across the stream because I was posting about it, you know, on TikTok, and they thought it was a really cool idea. They joined the live stream, they were our guardians and they're, you know, a couple and they seemed very much like not like theater people or connected to the arts in any way like theater people or connected to the arts in any way but they were so fantastic, they helped us win a round, which is amazing, which is only the second time that that's happened.
Speaker 2:And this kind of ideal moment really happened during that match where, you know, I was explaining the rules on the stream and to them to say, like how they can interact with us and I was saying like, yeah, you all can talk to each other, right, like via the voice chat in the game, like we actually like how you are communicating in like gamer language while we're performing Sophocles, like that tension and overlap is like really exciting to me, like as a director, and so I was like, please talk, like that's totally fine. But you know one of the players, she was like really nervous to talk and at the end she's like I didn't want to interrupt you in my talk.
Speaker 2:So it was really hard and I was like no, like you could have done that. And she's like yeah, I know. And then her boyfriend said like no, like you were doing your job and we were doing ours, and like we were here to support you. And I was like whoa, that's beautiful, you know, just like this, like very simple, you know sentence. But I was like that's quite literally why we made the project.
Speaker 2:It's for people who probably would have never come to a production of Electra at their local theater, said to a group of theater makers who they had never met before.
Speaker 2:But via the power of the internet and by meeting in the middle on a thing we both love, which is Fortnite, they said we respect your job and we want to help you do your job, which I like never hear from any audience in the United States of America besides theater people. Right, so that was. It seems small, but it was extremely powerful for me and that's why we're really trying to do it, because I think there are so many other people like that that want to interact with art and feel distant from it and they just need to be shown that they're welcome and we really need to be meeting people on their own turf in order to do that and not be so standoffish about you know, like, oh, this is the theater, this is where we do the thing, you know, because you know we have that problem here especially. So, yeah, so it's a really wide variety of people that have been coming through, which is great.
Speaker 1:And you know I've so enjoyed our conversation and hopefully people listening have as well. My worry is at the moment we're in sort of at the end of late March 2025, as we record this is, the panic that you can feel from traditional creative practitioners in numerous fields about the rapidly developing capabilities of generative AI is sort of palpable, you know, and it feels like it's gone up a few notches over the last few weeks, and my worry is that, with that being seemingly the overriding vibe about technology, ie that it's scary and now it is directly trying to take our jobs my worry is there'll be a sort of retrenchment away from technology and people will be taking a big step back from it because it feels like the enemy, and so it is both a complicated, difficult thing that we don't know about and also now it's threatening us so we don't want to engage with it. Do you have any sort of words of encouragement or what's your perspective on that? You know the state that we currently find ourselves in.
Speaker 2:Absolutely no. This is certainly a conversation that is extremely important and one that I am trying to really be a leader in right now, because I see this conflict that's emerging and I see the fear that exists and I understand it. You know, I recently wrote an article actually like just about exactly this and trying to implore artists in general, but also especially theater makers, and help folks understand that I really believe we're entering an era of human existence where artists are more important than ever and not being replaced. If you actually dig deep right into what we do best, you know and we kind of have had this conversation continually over the last, you know, 45 minutes here like we don't just produce content, quote, unquote, right Like I never use that word very, very specifically, even if I am an internet creator as well Like we're not just spitting stuff out. That's what the computers are doing, right, that's what AI is doing. Some of it can be beautiful and great, but a lot of this moment we're experiencing right now is people who are not artistically trained feeling really empowered by a tool and just making lots of stuff right. And as that becomes noisier and noisier, we are, as a culture, going to need people to make meaning out of all of these images, right, In this moment we're in, right now, it's all Studio Ghibli, you know, a thigh your face, right? It'll be a good cultural touch point if people listen to this, you know, later in the year, et cetera. And what is that? Right, it's fun and it's interesting and cute and it's making emotional resonance for people because it stirs up memory of oh, I love this movie and so I love to see my girlfriend look like this with our dog, Like that's fun.
Speaker 2:But it's going to take the artists in order to say why are we doing this? How can we use this tool? That's all it is. It's a tool. It's not a form, it's just a tool. How can we use this tool to tell stories we couldn't tell before? How do we also reckon with this technology as a society? How do we have conversations about it, even outside of, you know, making performance or making art, Just like? How do we help the governments understand how to make laws, or how do we want to have these conversations with our children or in our houses with our families, Like artists are best at doing all of those things right?
Speaker 2:So I really believe strongly that we're entering that era and that also, while we see all this tremendous wave of stuff and content, or slop, whatever you want to call it, I actually do think we're going to have some kind of violent reaction, as you're saying. I see like textiles becoming really hot in the next five years, really like handmade objects. I think like very simple theater of like really really good actors in a room with one light being really popular, because I think, if people are going to crave something that they know is distinctly human, because it's becoming and will become, exponentially harder to determine what you're seeing in front of you, whether or not it was made by a human or not, and like, if it's like that human in the image is a real human or not, and that's already happened, right, so we can only imagine where that's going to go from here. Side note, I'm a huge proponent of these laws around, like digitally watermarking AI images, which I know like Europe has been a real leader in, so I'm hoping that we have that over here in the States soon to help with this. But I feel like, as that happens and we have that experience, people are going to crave knowing, hey, I'm talking to a human right now, and what is better than that, than the theater. What is better than that, than live dance right, Than a live musician sitting in front of you, going to a room to use your eyes and look at a person and breathe with them and say you're real, I'm real.
Speaker 2:I just see that kind of growing exponentially, which is really exciting, both in the traditional models, and we're able to also help people as they want to explore the technology and make meaning out of it.
Speaker 2:So in many ways, it's actually a win-win for us and I'm choosing to be very optimistic about it because, yes, there's a lot of fear to be had and I'm not trying to discredit that by any means, but I think the only way to not bring about the future that we're fearing is to deeply engage in this moment, in these conversations, because in many ways it's almost already too late, which I don't want to say out of like to scare people, but especially when I'm talking to folks here in the States about it, where you know it's like capitalism rules the day times 100. Right, it's like this is where we're going, Like this is where the machine is pushing us, and you know the power of AI is like the pinnacle of what capitalism can do. Right. And so let's have this conversation right. And if it's going to happen, how do we want it to work with our life, right? Or if we're trying to stop it, like, let's understand why or what that will then prevent us from being able to do right.
Speaker 2:When I'm trying to help people understand, I say like okay, like, do you think that, like, we should have never invented cars, you know? Like, should we still be using horse and buggies to get around? Like and I try to use that not to be facetious, but to say we've just have a tool that accelerates things. Right, and if we start to really think of it just as an accelerator, then the human doesn't lose their value, right, Because there still needs to be a human to tell it what to do and have good ideas, and that's us.
Speaker 1:And on that thoughtful and optimistic note, thank you so much, Brandon. I've absolutely loved our conversation today. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker 2:Of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this conversation and want to hear more, you can find all episodes of the podcast on the digital dot works, and if your organization needs help making sense of digital, you can get in touch with me via my website at ashmanco. That's man with two n's. See you next time.
