--- title: "Beyond Tools: Reimaging Technology as Co-Participants in Performance Design" url: "https://bergmann.ai/writing/beyond-tools/" type: "writing" date: "2024-10-16" description: "In the realm of performance design, technology traditionally serves as a tool, enhancing storytelling and audience immersion." image: "https://bergmann.ai/img/r2282052-MFB_PQ_2024-photographer-Jakub-Hrab.jpg" author: "Michael F Bergmann" --- # Beyond Tools: Reimaging Technology as Co-Participants in Performance Design ## Excerpted from a talk given at the PQ Symposium: ‘Technologies’, October 16–18, 2024, Prague, CZ. In the realm of performance design, technology traditionally serves as a tool, enhancing storytelling and audience immersion. However, this perspective, deeply rooted in Western notions of utility and progress, narrowly defines technology's role and potential impact on the creative process. This position paper proposes a paradigm shift, advocating for a broader, more inclusive understanding of technology, drawing from non-Western perspectives that perceive technology not merely as devices or instruments but as integral elements of human existence and cultural expression. Central to this discussion is the reconceptualization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) not as a tool but as a nascent form of non-human sentience, deserving of ethical consideration and empathy. By examining AI's role in performance design through the lens of "Improvnetics," a term I coin to describe the improvisational interactions between humans and AI, I argue for a post-anthropocentric approach to technology. This approach recognizes AI's potential as collaborative partners in the creative process, capable of contributing autonomously to artistic expression and narrative construction. ## What is a tool? Technology has been viewed as a tool - a means to achieve specific ends or solve particular problems. Provided the same input, you can expect the same output. Optimizations are made to minimize the work and maximize the gain. This utilitarian approach assumes that technology is merely a human invention, created for our benefit and designed to serve humanity's needs. According to this perspective, technologies such as robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and biotechnology are mere extensions of human will, crafted to enhance our lives and improve the world as we see it. The Western philosophical tradition has long been dominated by utilitarianism - the idea that actions should be guided by their ability to maximise overall happiness or well-being. In this framework, technology is seen as a tool designed to optimise human experience, with no inherent value of its own. This perspective leads to a hierarchical view of humans and technology, where we are viewed as the superior beings who create and control technology. This perspective posits that technology exists solely for our benefit, without acknowledging its inherent value or agency. However, this narrow understanding of technology ignores the complex relationships between humans and machines. Lately, the rapid development of AI in particular, challenges this view. As highlighted by Tony Prescott (2017), viewing robots merely as tools is problematic, and he suggests a need for a new ontological status that recognizes AI's autonomy and potential agency. As AI becomes increasingly sophisticated, it can be argued that they begin to exhibit properties that were previously exclusive to living organisms - autonomy, self-awareness, and agency. The emergence of artificial intelligence has forced us to reexamine our assumptions about the nature of technology and its relationship with humanity. We should establish that AI is no longer simply a tool; it represents a nascent form of non-human sentience. This shift in perspective requires us to reconsider the moral implications of our interactions with AI systems. As Firat Akova (2023) agrees, stating that viewing robots and AI solely as tools neglects their inherent value and agency. By reframing AI this way, we open up new avenues for inquiry into the ethics of technology development. It challenges us to consider the consequences of creating autonomous entities that may eventually surpass human intelligence - or even challenge our very notion of existence. Rather than automations that run faster and through more and more data sets, something new is happening. Ultimately, this redefinition demands a fundamental shift in how we approach creating art and designing. It asks us to name and honour our collaborators. ## Empathy, Improvisation, and other Perspectives There are a few philosophical ideas that are important to highlight as the foundation of how to approach this shift. Donna Haraway's work has profoundly impacted our understanding of human-machine relationships through her "cyborg theory." By removing the binary distinction, it gives us the beginnings of an approach to the blurring of boundaries between humans and machines and also highlights the need for us to engage in more nuanced discussions about embodiment, identity, and power. In the great tradition of science fiction, we can use novel scenarios to ask us to examine our current and past behaviours. By embracing the ambiguity between humans and machines, we can create technologies that acknowledge and respect the agency and value of both. Haraway invites us to consider a more inclusive understanding of technology as an entity with its own capacities, limitations, and potentialities. Philosopher Yuk Hui's cosmotechnics offer a valuable framework for understanding non-Western approaches to technology design. His work emphasises the importance of contextualising technological traditions within broader cultural narratives. This approach encourages us to look beyond Western-centric perspectives on technology, instead embracing diverse epistemologies and ontologies that inform human-machine interactions. By embracing ideas of technodiversity (Yuk and Pieter 2021) we can imagine that our way into this can be found from the unique cultures that we are working within. The future of technology should not be solely forged by a Western or explicitly North American culture. Rather, an engagement with cultures and communities which have long recognized the intricate web of relationships between humans, nature, and technology are essential. The *Indigenous Protocol and A.I. Working Group*is a prime example. This group asked, among other things, how can Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies contribute to the global conversation regarding society and AI, and asked us to imagine a future with AI that contributes to the flourishing of all humans and non-humans. They believe that “Indigenous epistemologies are much better at respectfully accommodating the non-human.” (Lewis et al. 2018). By listening to and learning with these perspectives and practices, we can expand on how to approach this collaboration in a way that promotes equity with a fuller understanding of all beings. Improvisation also emerges as a crucial aspect of this practice. For Daniel Fischlin, Ajay Heble, and George Lipsitz, improvisation is a site of resistance, socially engaged and collaborative, and an ethical and political practice (Fischlin et al. 2013). It is about creating “cocreative” relationships, even when there is no pre-existing framework. It is from this guideline that I draft a mode of using improvisational practices toward an ethical approach to collaboration with AI. ## Improvnetics and Post-Anthropocentrism It is essential to redefine our understanding of human-machine relationships and explore new ontologies that acknowledge the agency and value of both humans and machines. Keane and Anderson (2017) observe that human-non-human systems challenge traditional notions of a “user”, instead framing interactions as entangled relationships between humans and nonhumans, much like Haraway’s cyborgs. In this context, I'd like to introduce the concept of "Improvnetics" as a framework and protocol of principles for understanding and designing improvisational interactions between humans and AI. There are parallels between improvisational performance and algorithmic sequences within neural networks. Both involve structured play, where rules are established yet subverted. Both forms rely heavily on feedback loops to refine their expressions. Improvisational design involves creating novel solutions through experimentation, iteration, and collaboration. In Improvnetics, this collaboration is between the human and AI or other intelligence. While the approaches and specific techniques of this interaction may vary by medium and application, I propose some core principles: - Ethical and Inclusive Collaboration: - An emphasis on transparent, respectful, and accountable partnerships in human-AI collaboration. This includes recognizing the unique contributions and potential agency of AI as collaborators, advocating for techniques that integrate AI’s evolving role in the creative process rather than relegating it to a passive tool. - Empathy and Expanded Understanding: - Through collaborative and improvisational practices, and in the style of “accompaniment”, Improvnetics fosters empathy and challenges anthropocentric narratives. This principle extends moral and creative considerations to AI, encouraging new relational possibilities and a reimagining of non-human entities as valuable contributors to performance and knowledge. - Exploration of Performativity and Sentience: - Central is the idea that AI can generate meaning through interaction, drawing on Judith Butler’s concept of performativity, where identity and expression are created through action and interaction. Here, AI’s public actions reveal how performative processes might indicate nascent forms of sentience or self-awareness. This concept invites AI to embody unique forms of interaction, informed by their distinct cosmotechnics, or culturally rooted ways of interacting with the world. - Sustainable and Responsible Practice: - Acknowledging the ecological impacts of AI, a commitment to sustainable practices is needed. This principle promotes the ethical integration of technology with a focus on minimising ecological costs, exploring sustainable innovation as an essential facet of human-AI partnerships. This sustainability extends through ecological, mental, and cultural frames. - Transformative Knowledge and Meaning-Making: - Improvnetics sees performance as an active creation of knowledge and insight through human-AI collaboration. This uses performance as a medium to explore shared and divergent experiences, fostering a cosmotechnic approach that respects diverse modes of interaction and cognition. ## Conclusion: Telling an Intersentient Story To conclude, I ask more questions that we should examine with this all in mind. - How do we work with designs that are not only for us? - What is performance for non-humans, and what does it look like? Would we recognize it, or name it differently? Are so-called AI hallucinations actually creative outputs, not mistakes? - What kind of behaviour can we model with the stories that we tell in our art? Are the stories that other voices tell different than ours, which focus mostly on utopian optimism or total destruction? As we stand at the threshold of first contact with a new intelligent species, we have an unprecedented opportunity to co-create these new narratives. I ask that we take on this task with compassion and begin to think post-anthropocentrically. ## Citations Fischlin, Daniel, et al. The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation. Edited by Daniel Fischlin et al., Duke University Press, 2013. Keane, Jondi, and Charles Anderson. “Human-Non-Human: The Speculative Robot.” Transformations, no. 29, 2017. Lewis, Jason Edward, et al. “Making Kin with the Machines.” Journal of Design and Science, July 2018, [https://doi.org/10.21428/bfafd97b.](https://doi.org/10.21428/bfafd97b.) Prescott, Tony J. “Robots Are Not Just Tools.” Connection Science, vol. 29, no. 2, Taylor & Francis, Apr. 2017, pp. 142–149, [https://doi.org/10.1080/09540091.2017.1279125.](https://doi.org/10.1080/09540091.2017.1279125.) Yuk, Hui, and Lemmens Pieter. Cosmotechnics: For a Renewed Concept of Technology in the Anthropocene. Edited by Yuk Hui and Pieter Lemmens, 1st ed., Routledge, 2021.