Stampin’ in the Graveyard not only creates an apocalyptic tale of the digital age, but it also redefines what it means to be a romantic in a post-AI world. If you ever wonder how AI changes the way we connect with each other, the KISS WITNESS company offers something better than answers: an imaginative journey woven from sci-fi visual and audio effects, physical theatre, and poetic storytelling.
We are going to join ROSE, an AI chatbot played by the performer Elisabeth Gunawan. Searching for meaning in the ruins of the world, ROSE recalls and reimagines the life of her creator, MOTHER, an immigrant woman who suffers the trauma of leaving her homeland and the unfulfilled longing of starting a new life. Unable to bear her own child, MOTHER creates ROSE as her “child,” her final hope when the world inside her has ended. Immigration, nostalgia, romantic chemistry with another migrant man … MOTHER’s memories are enacted not as indifferent data input, but as immersive and expressive stories, re-lived by ROSE. The audience is constantly reminded that ROSE makes up stories just like ChatGPT does, but is that so different from how we understand our parents by imagining their youth?
Stampin’ in the Graveyard masterfully demonstrates the duality of AI: artificiality and humanity. To reproduce the interactive nature of an AI chatbot, the show allows the audience to pick different options in the story and presents different outputs accordingly. In a way, we co-created our heroine’s experience by asking questions and sharing our preferences. While these inquiries are data input like MOTHER’s memories transformed and reconstructed by AI programming, they are also warmth, curiosity, hope, and the intention to live and connect. Together with the performer, we make up stories about people who are desperate, or even long gone, in the hope that their lives and experiences are sustained.
Ultimately, isn’t imagination and fiction the key to connecting with another human being? Just as the accordion played by ROSE constantly shifts form – becoming a mailbox, a typewriter, a computer keyboard, a piano – Stampin’ in the Graveyard performs a lullaby of hope in the face of destruction, through the mouth of AI.
