Humanoid Performance in Rimini Protokoll’s Uncanny Valley (2018) and Holly Herndon’s Spawn (2019)

How do non-human performers perform humanness on stage? In this paper I explore the aesthetics and reception of humanoid AI and robotic performers in two Berlin-based case studies, and consider the rich history of technologies modelled on the human form, from Da Vinci’s sketches for a robotic knight, to Lil Miquela, a fictional digital ‘influencer’ with over 1.5 million Instagram followers. How does human desire to create in our own image manifest on a post-digital stage, and what can we learn about live performance from humanoid performers? My first case study is Holly Herndon’s artificially intelligent collaborator, Spawn. Herndon is an award-winning composer, and she trained Spawn in ‘live sessions’ with the help of a large choir. These training sessions were publically presented at the Gropius-Bau in Berlin, and later released as part of an album (Proto, 2019). I analyse the aesthetics used to present Spawn as a human-like entity ‘birthed’ from a collaborative creative process, and the ways in which Spawn is present on stage during live performances. Acclaimed theatre collective Rimini Protokoll’s Uncanny Valley (Unheimliches Tal) is my second example, in which a robot modelled as a ‘copy’ of author Thomas Melle performed a series of talks based on his autobiography. I trace the critical reception of the Melle robot in Munich and Berlin (2018/19), and explore the revealing value judgements made by theatre critics on a basis of life-like/less-ness.Together, these examples of humanoid performance challenge the life-cycle of a performance, and the values by which we measure creative labour. Spawn and the Melle robot destabilise definitions of ‘live’ performance, and raise questions of veracity and fakery, repetition and creation, and of artistic autonomy.

Katie Hawthorne is a final year PhD candidate in European Theatre at the University of Edinburgh, supported by a scholarship awarded by the Wolfson Foundation. Her thesis compares landscapes of theatre-making in Edinburgh and Berlin, and investigates liveness as a culturally contextual experience. She received an MSc in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh in 2015, and a first class joint honours degree in English Literature and German from the University of Nottingham in 2013.