Three performers on stage. They might be machines or humans alike — who can tell the difference? With them, a pile of 150 white polystyrene panels. All artificial, but not intelligent.
HAPPY HOUR
Happy Hour is a performative Minecraft session inspired by the current buzz around artificial intelligence. It portrays a world in which humans have gradually outsourced their intelligence, abilities and skills to artificial systems. A portrait of humankind drowning in an endless flood of AI slop.
A swamp, a lake, a cemetery, a glacier, a tower, a temple, a fortress… Step by step, the frenetic activity of the performers results in increasingly complex generic structures being built and demolished on stage. Each construction resembles something specific, yet the moment it becomes recognisable, it is already being dismantled and replaced by another configuration.
If it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell who wrote this text, it is not because algorithms took over, but because humans gradually adapted to the generic language, behaviour and aesthetics produced by AI.
Happy Hour is an exercise in pointless progress. It invites its audience to meditate on an uncanny world that we created but can no longer fully master.
"ChatGPT has read most of the internet, and it knows what human language is supposed to sound like, but it has no relation to reality whatsoever. It is dreaming sentences that sound about right, and listening to it talk is frankly about as interesting as listening to someone’s dreams. It is very good at producing what sounds like sense, and best of all at producing cliche and banality, which has composed the majority of its diet, but it remains incapable of relating meaningfully to the world as it actually is.”
James Bridle, The Stupidity of Ai (The Guardian)
"Happy Hour offers a refined blend of humour and depression"
Lucie Kocourková, Theatre Journal
"Without pomp, Happy Hour offers such a massive parallel to human civilisation that it fogged up my glasses. Mind you, I didn’t even take them out of my pocket."
Martin Špetlík (Lighting Designer)
CREDITS
Concept, direction, set design by Jan Mocek
Created with and performed by:
Tinka Avramova, Irina Andreeva, Arseniy Mikhaylov
Music: Matouš Hekela
Sound, lighting: Ondřej Růžička
Consultations: Sodja Lotker
Photo: Martin Špelda
Teaser: Radim Labuda
Production: Táňa Švehlová, SixHouses z.s
With support from / acknowledgments: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Prague, Prague 7 Municipal District, State Fund for Culture, Život Umělce Foundation, Czech-German Future Fund, SixHouses z.s.
