manτεία: (manteia)

manτεία (meaning prophecy or divination) is a new performance written and produced by Roberto Alonso Trillo and Peter Nelson that examines how ancient practices of geomancy and divination relate to our desire to find meaning in AI. Apophenia is the human tendency to look for meaningful patterns in random patterns, from the shapes of clouds to the scratches in oracle bones, to the outputs of AI generators. As our cultures grapple with the rapid evolution of AI, manτεία returns us to the ancient quest to communicate with the transcendent, by looking for messages in clouds and melodies in noise. Premiering at Freespace West Kowloon on the 22nd of December 2024, manτεία uses a unique approach to artistic collaboration, where artists produce sculptures, compositions and virtual worlds that send signals to one another, linking them together into a chain of creation via a technical process known as "multimodal mapping". A giant mechanical sculpture will create an irregular heartbeat that drives a sculpture made of smoke. A costume provides a digital portal into another world, and an AI trained on classical texts of Chinese and European mythology tries to find meaning in these heartfelt gestures from young contemporary artists.