Assistant Professor of Theatre, James Dennen, along with award-winning collaborators Director of Collaborative Technologies for the Fine Arts and visual artist, Christian Faur, and Denison’s Ensemble-in-Residence string quartet, EHTEL, along with dancer Brianna Rhodes, and written and spoken word artists Michael “Blakk Sun” Powell, present a world premiere exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.
Combining musical, visual, theatrical, and virtual elements—with interference from artificial intelligence—Like Leaves. Like Carrots. asks whether we still need human creativity and person-to-person encounters and stage their response to Samuel Beckett’s absurdist tragicomedy Waiting for Godot (1952) in mixed realities (virtual and actual), written and performed by mixed intelligences (both artificial and human).
Expanding on systems developed by Dennen while in residence at the Wexner Center, this world premiere places old and new technologies in playful alliance. Puppetry, robotics, spoken-word storytelling, virtual reality, choreography, and machine intelligence are employed to challenge our assumptions about what machines have done for and to us in search of a human frontier at the cutting edge of technological innovation (program approx. 45 mins.)
This exhibition is a part of Dennen’s virtual residency at the Wexner Center for the Arts.
