"The heat used for stir-frying is different, the utensils are different, and the things that come out in the end must be different."
During the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival earlier this month, Pinplay had a conversation with the festival's artistic director and director Meng Jinghui, and he said this when talking about the feeling of creating the opening play "Faust".
Different from the theater festival we remember, the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival partially detached from the theater and the scene, using technology such as motion capture and VR to move the "stage" into the virtual world. This is a rare attempt in the field of theater before, and it is also an unknown challenge for the artistic creators involved.
People have always tended to think that technology is better at solving certain problems, just as artificial intelligence can play chess with humans to win and lose, and can be applied to facial recognition and automatic driving to help humans solve real-world problems. However, in the field of art, the use of science and technology always seems to lag behind, what technology can bring to art, and how to combine with art, there is no clear answer for a while.
This is also the question that the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival tries to answer.
A theatre festival around technology
"We sensed that a new aesthetic experience might emerge now." Liu Chang, director of the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival, spoke in a forum during the festival about the reason for the festival's original creation, "Technology is closely related to our society and life, it has changed our lives, and it will definitely have an impact on our aesthetic expression." How to use new technology combined with narrative to build emotions with the audience is very interesting for us and something that is very necessary to try. ”
He went on to add, "Even if it fails, there has to be a beginning." ”
The pan-theatrical works presented by this festival all use popular emerging technologies to varying degrees.
Take "Faust" directed by Meng Jinghui, for example, it uses the motion capture technology that was often used in film and television and game production, and uses VR equipment to land - about an hour and a half of the performance, the audience spends the first 15 minutes in the VR virtual world, VR glasses present a special production for the performance, through the virtual performance part of the actor's performance to capture and render, the audience sees in the VR device screen is based on the virtual image of each character theatrical performance; After 15 minutes, the story moves back to the stage and continues.
Providing motion capture and virtual digital avatar support for the work was a company called "Second Culture", in which digital avatars of characters such as Faust, the Devil and Madame Faust were produced by Second World Culture. Next World Culture is also one of the initiators of the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival, with mature experience in virtual human production - the company's previously better known "works" are the virtual image "Di Li Lengba" of star Di Li Gerba, and the virtual image "Taosman" of Huang Zitao; Virtual people such as Lingling, DJ PURPLE and Namco Xia, who are often active on social media, are also from the hands of the next culture.
Next World Culture was also directly involved in the production of two other productions of the festival, "Brain Death Buffet" directed by Yu Han and "Welcome" directed by Yuerge.
In fact, the use of technology in the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival is not limited to the theater itself.
Before the festival, the organizers invited 83 "feeling, touching and perceiving participants of the metaverse" from all walks of life to generate theatrical posters with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). Different from the tradition of many arts festivals in the past to formulate "main vision", the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival asked 83 participants to each propose 6 keywords based on the understanding of "metaverse", and used AI to generate 83 different forms of theater posters to form the "vision" of this theater festival.
Liu Chang explains, "Everyone can have their own main vision. The 'Sphinx' itself is a mystery, and everyone can imagine about it. ”
As we all know, the "metaverse" itself is not a new technology, but a large number of existing technologies that integrate cloud computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and human-computer interaction. What the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival is doing is trying to combine these technologies to achieve a metaverse in which virtual and real interactions in the theater world. Ideas such as generating 83 AI posters are obviously in line with the characteristics of the "decentralization" of the metaverse.
It can be said that the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival was born entirely for the "metaverse".
Technology has changed something
"This new attempt (made by virtual humans) will be closer to the exploration of theater art in form, rather than the previous way of expressing film and television language." Chen Yan, founder and CEO of Next World Culture, talked about the feeling of participating in the creation of the festival, and he also served as the general consultant of metaverse technology for the festival. After the virtual human, the next world culture will expand its exploration to the construction of virtual ecology from 2021, and the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival is a typical attempt.
This is an experience that Chen Yan has never had before, "Compared to our own virtual human project, Meng Jinghui's characters come more from thick traditions and innovative stories, which give the characters a sense of 'rebirth' rather than reproduction." ”
As he said, the spark of technology and art colliding is always surprising.
"Technology actually makes people more aware of the importance of human creativity." In a forum during the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival, fashion culture scholar Xu Xiaomiao concluded.
Xu Xiaomiao's fashion industry is equally closely integrated with technology. Not long ago, she "watched" at the magazine where she contributed, a set generated by Midjourney and a post-composite of model photos taken by photographers, which she thought was a test of the photographer's motivation.
"Under the premise of existing sets, photographers must clearly know the relationship between each model and the light and shadow in the corresponding set, and the relationship between perspective angle, which is an ability that only experienced photographers can realize and grasp well." Xu Xiaomiao said, "That's why I think the emergence of AI just makes us realize how important it is to grasp some of the most basic skills such as aesthetic perspectives as creators." ”
She continued, "Whether it's AI, any new technology, it's a new starting point for creators, and you can never know how much self-awareness or self-aesthetic value can play a role when you use it as a tool." ”
Similar experiences, Meng Jinghui, who is deeply involved in the creation of the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival, also has a deep experience.
The creative habits of most drama creators are pre-existing ideas and texts, which are related to the literary tradition of drama and the training methods that creators have always received; But when technologies such as motion capture and VR are added, theater creators are already required to prioritize more audiovisual and artistic design.
"Rehearsing in the green screen and rehearsing in the theater requires imagination, both painting in public, but using motion capture to rehearse the virtual world, it is to run freely in the wider world." Meng Jinghui said, "Sometimes it is like a wild horse out of control, completely out of your control. Doing drama in this situation is like talking to a new person you don't know, maintaining your temperament and getting to know the other person. ”
Chen Yan also mentioned, "The number of performers in this drama with director Meng Jinghui is something we have not tried before, and Faust has a group play of 10 people, and these performances and on-site scheduling capabilities come more from the director's experience. ”
It can be said that technology is having an unprecedented impact on the way artists create and work.
Musician Chen Chen Chen, who has recently tried to use AI in his work, described the feeling of working with AI, "AI will give me some unexpected ideas, I usually ask AI before the official work, which is equivalent to AI joining the pre-work of my work, and my formal creativity starts after the AI has exhausted (all possibilities)." ”
He also learned a new "skill" – writing documents.
"When you work with technology, you have parastatism, whether it's ChatGPT or artificial intelligence, a lot of things are parameterized." Chen Chen Chen said, "So when communicating with technology companies, the thinking actually has to be changed, because more often than not, you are communicating with product managers, you have to break down your ideas into very specific steps, and then implement them little by little, I think this is what the new 'parametric field artists' have to do." ”
Under the tide of technology, how artists deal with themselves
Since the advent of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, people's discussions about artificial intelligence big language models have not stopped. In addition to discussing the technology itself and possible applications, it is inevitable that people will talk about the future of human beings at the end of the discussion - AI is evolving exponentially, compared to human intelligence and experience are difficult to catch up with AI, so will the advanced technology represented by AI replace humans one day? How should humans deal with themselves?
Although it seems that the combination of technology and art is often lagging behind, this question cannot but also leave its mark on the hearts of artists.
Different people have different attitudes. "Unpopular singer" Sun Yanzi sent a long article a few days ago in response to the explosion of "AI Sun Yanzi", and many people think from the perspective of copyright, law and other perspectives, Sun Yanzi broke the essence of the problem: AI is completing thousands of tasks that humans once thought machines could not replicate, and humans cannot surpass it is just around the corner. What is revealed between words is to accept it calmly and be yourself.
More fierce resistance came from across the ocean in Hollywood, where thousands of Hollywood Writers Guild (WGA) members took to the streets earlier this month to demonstrate that in addition to fighting for a bigger share of their share in the streaming era, another core demand of the strike was to resist the widespread use of AI in screenwriting, because AI not only robbed screenwriters of their jobs, but also devalued "the dignity and value of human labor."
Artists also seem to be the jobs that people say are most easily replaced by advanced technology.
However, before arriving at the answer to this question, many people actually overlook a very basic point - the development of art itself has always included the figure of technology.
New media artist Liu Jiayu talks about her recent experience in Dunhuang to shoot a documentary. She learned that the reason why the mural style of the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes is different from the Yungang Grottoes and Longmen Grottoes is because the development of the Silk Road in ancient times allowed the craftsmen who built the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes to use foreign pigments from India and other places, which was almost the best color at that time. "Through this, it is not difficult to imagine that technology has accompanied the development of art since ancient times, and artistic expression has indeed been using technology as a tool or medium, so that materials and pigments can be more perfectly presented." Liu Jiayu said.
If you go back in history, the "AI threat theory" may seem less nervous.
"I think in different times people sell different anxieties." Chen Yan talked about his understanding, as a technology enthusiast from childhood to adulthood, he did not show too much anxiety about the rapid development of science and technology, "In fact, everything is chosen by people themselves, because even if AI can help us generate 83 posters and help us do countless creations, but I think in the final analysis, it is ultimately a person's aesthetic decision whether to use it." ”
Xu Xiaomiao described AI as the first industrial revolution weaving machine, "It may replace the workers on the assembly line, but most people in this industry will become the people who operate the loom." ”
People decide whether to use it or not, and how to use it, in fact, they are also defining the tool properties of technology. After the experiment of the Sphinx Metaverse Theater Festival, Meng Jinghui once again firmly believed in this idea, and he also mentioned a word with Pin Play - "artist's bias".
"Art is not a Disney fairy tale, nor is it simply one because so, it is complex, it is created by a group of prejudiced people, it is unpredictable." Meng Jinghui said that because of this, he does not think that AI can create "Rhino in Love", "The birth of a work in addition to the work itself, but also with the times, just like now you write a "Rhino in Love", may not necessarily cause so much discussion, it has a lot of uprooted historical things, there is the right time, place, people and the right atmosphere." ”
Artist bias and AI actually form a very interesting contrast - we all know that AI cannot be biased, and the smartest people in the world are busy with making sure that AI is not biased. This may also be the most essential difference between artists and AI, people can shape technology, there can be many things outside the rules, but there are only rules in the world of AI.
"And I think humans are actually quite 'chicken thieves.'" Meng Jinghui continued, "From a certain point of view, humans will adjust, not that the technology comes, I am controlled by it, it is not so easy. ”