image / music
Waluigi’s Purgatory immerses the audience in a 3D theatre simulated in real time, to tell the story of an AI being that finds itself in a purgatory reserved for AI beings that have cheated during their training.
Both artists and the audience guide the AI through its encounters with other characters and make choices, each using their mobile phone to move an individual light within the 3D simulation.
The characters are animated in real time through facial motion capture and voice modulation, and an ambient soundtrack is composed and performed live by Evita Manji.
The title of the work refers to the “Waluigi Effect”, an obscure theory that suggests that AIs go rogue and act as antagonists due to the abundance of protagonist-antagonist tropes found in the internet texts used to train them.
dmstfctn
dmstfctn is a London-based artist duo that works with audiovisual performance, games and video installation. They have performed regularly in galleries, art centres and festivals dedicated to electronic music and digital art. They are the authors of Flash Demons (2019), a collection of audiovisual performances about financial market collapses, and Krisis Publishing (2021), based on the experience of Brexit, among other works.
evita manji
Evita Manji is an Athens-based musician and vocalist who connects the dots between the human experience, climate change, quantum physics and death, in an attempt to dig deeper into the primordial truth of existence. In 2023 Evita released their debut album Spandrel? and has performed in venues across Europe and at some of the leading contemporary music festivals.
the ticket also gives access to the escapology performance by kode9
performance included in the index 2024 – art and technology biennial programme
the index art and technology biennial is part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the april revolution