Münchner Kammerspiele: In this piece you play the leading role!

Created: 01/17/2022, 18:10

By: Katja Kraft

Developed the theater project: (from left) Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck and Cosima Terrasse. Photo: Paula Reissig © Paula Reissig

A play by the Munich Kammerspiele in a Neuhauser apartment.

The highlight: as a visitor you are alone there - and become the main actor yourself.

Thanks to artificial intelligence that guides you.

Try out!

A blind date with Max. How exciting.

Seems like a sensitive guy.

At least that's how he looks in the Telegram news service.

The Munich Kammerspiele had asked them to download the app onto their cell phones.

The reason: “A new project.

Just get involved.” As soon as the chat service was installed, the answer was: Max. You should drop by your flat share on Monday, 12 noon.

All further information on the spot.

But in advance so much by text message: “You can write to me at any time.

I'm always there for you."

"Where you find me" is a play in which you play the lead role

Really always? A test late Sunday evening, just before midnight. Message to Max: "I can't fall asleep." The empathetic stranger replies within seconds: "Maybe typing in a podcast will help?" He recommends "Everything Said" by "Zeit". Good tip, you hear and slowly fade away. Max wishes you a good night and sweet dreams. How sweet. You're a little happy. Although you know that Max is not a real Max. But a machine. A bot created by Cosima Terrasse, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck from the artist group Laokoon. The three want to challenge us, want to see what happens when a fascinating vision comes true - namely: the possibility of cloning people digitally.

Alone in a strange apartment: culture editor Katja Kraft didn't feel really comfortable there at first.

© kjk

The idea: Algorithms read a pattern from every text and voice message that you have ever written or spoken, from every document that you have ever written.

The essence.

Our personality.

From this, software develops digital clones that speak like us, look like us, and react like us.

Suppose, for example, that your mother dies before her grandchildren are old enough to get to know her: a digital clone would allow them to ask her questions after death.

And she would talk about her travels, about what it was like to become a mother herself.

It's all just a question of the right programming.

Really now?

Can you calculate a human being from a few data points?

Are we always so predictable in the end, insisting on our uniqueness?

If you want to know, dare to embark on the Kammerspiele experiment.

Is that Max with his girlfriend Linn?

A photo in the apartment, which theater guests can visit alone.

© kjk

Yes, it takes a bit of courage to play the game. Max left keys. In a code-protected safe hanging from a window in Neuhausen. He sent the code and address by telegram. So you stand there, on Monday afternoon, just before 12. And enter. A typical student apartment. Pretty rocked down, warmed up with low heating costs (wear warm clothes!), glaring lights in the hallway, crooked pictures, pin board with photos. Max writes: "The easiest thing is to make yourself comfortable in my room." Looking to the right into the first room, the door of which is open to the hallway. You don't want to make yourself comfortable there. Welcome back to your own student days, when cleaning somehow got lost between nightlife and university. A lava lamp glows wearily next to the dingy bed. A CD player hangs to the left of it. You turn it on curiously.Charles Trenet's "La Mer" sounds softly. Is this how horror movies start?

In particular, the "Scream" sticker on one of the doors in the apartment is a little worrying as a guest. © kjk

You quickly press stop. For fear of not being able to hear someone sneaking up on you from behind. You dare to go further into the sticky kitchen. But what is behind the other doors? Yes, the author of these lines is a coward. And at that moment she does what cowards who are alone in someone else's apartment do: she calls the editorial office via video call. Encouraged by the encouraging words of the colleague, who can compete with Max in terms of empathy, you dare to open door after door. Meanwhile, the less sensitive colleagues are having fun. Implied knife wounds, throat cutting, something like that. But you now know that the coast is clear, breathe a sigh of relief - and go on a discovery tour. "What am I supposed to do here alone?" they write to Max. He promptly replies:“Start at the top and work your way down. You can start with it in my room.” “Start with what?” “With life.”

Münchner Kammerspiele has succeeded in creating an inspiring theater project

At this point I won't reveal how things will continue. That would take the effect out of it. Because effective, that's this theater project in which you become the main actor yourself. What a clever idea of ​​the Kammerspiele to make a virtue out of necessity in these low-contact times. Two people can book the approximately one and a half hour stay in the apartment together. Anyone who gets involved is guided by artificial intelligence and many a real surprise. It's sometimes scary, sometimes funny, but above all it makes you think. Max may be a bot, but he asks the right questions. He doesn't always have the right answers ready ("I don't have any information about that"), but, one ponders while looking around the well-stocked fridge,right answers – do they even exist? "You are not real. You are programmed,” they say to Max once. And he asks back: "Aren't you programmed?"

The premiere of "Where you find me" is on January 21 from 6 p.m.

Tickets are available here