Lagging With the LOLOLOLS

A unique opportunity to learn about the digit-breaking scientific discoveries of distinguished cyber-ethnographer Professor Aneel Neniraas in her lecture on 'Investigations into Distributed Practices of Goddess Worship in Extreme Internet Cultures'.

Lagging with the Lololos is a surreal journey across the multiple platforms of cyberspace.

Lagging with the Lololos is staged using two live-stage performers, together with webcams and the Palace chat room software. The narrative moves across and between live stage, chatroom and webcam, creating a new spatial performance mode described as cyberformance.

synopsis

Celebrated AI researcher, Hanna Roadway is demonstrating her latest, highly skilled cyborg creation, Aneel. This cyborg is the culmination of a long series of experimentation for Hanna, including a notorious research project that used chat room avatars to create meaningful social behaviour out of mere gibberish. Initially structured as a lecture/demo, the presentation quickly devolves into a surreal journey across the multiple platforms of cyberspace. One by one, Hanna's AI creations slip from her grasp to stage their own entertainments – sometimes with disastrous results. Hanna struggles in vain to gain control of these newly autonomous lifeforms, and in the process finds her own identity and status under threat.

See images from the premiere
at the Virtual Minds Congress, Bremen, Germany, 12 March 2004

Leena's aftershow thoughts: Computer as Performer.