A frustrating display of AI-age alienation
It’s the aftermath of a party. Plastic cups, streamers and empty bottles are littered
across the stage as a wigged actor opens their mouth to asks if we are just going
to stand there. Instead, a dull emotionless AI voice is blared from the speaker
and loops round and round.
And the answer is yes. This continues throughout the performance, delivered
entirely through lip-sync as AI generated text to speech speaks for them, a
technically impressive feat, pulled off with precision by the cast.
The result is an uncomfortable hour and a half, as moments of Tim Etchells
beautiful language get lost in the noise of the monotonous AI automation. There’s
a sadness to this show as the characters struggle to connect, communicate or
even move, often glitching and getting stuck in repetitive motion. This is cleverly
realised through Etchells’s composition and in Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall
and Terry O’Connor’s, comic larger than life embodiments of these three strange
human AI hybrids.
Etchells’s sound design provides a layer of respite to the grating AI voices,
whether through upbeat jazz in one of the initial moments of lightness or the
sounds of dog barking and a voice pleading in Spanish towards the end as the
tension between the characters close in.
This show is a difficult watch, but that is most definitely the point. Forced
Entertainment suspend time as the voices loop on and on. Lowdown’s design
signals to this post-apocalyptic era we find ourselves in, the aftermath of a party,
surrounded by waste. This becomes particularly poignant in a moment where a
bag of takeaway boxes is delivered while an AI voice lists things you can find in
the world – ranging from crack den to war, carried out with a flat apathy.
There’s a frustration in the show, with nothing ever quite allowed to be fully
expressed. The performers attempt to get above the sludge, becoming
something new, changing their wigs, wrestling with an inflatable flamingo,
drinking from an empty bottle of vodka and shouting over their friends.
But are they actually changing or at all? Or are they trapped in the same old
sludge and conversational cycle as the relentless AI chatter continues to buzz
around them?
For an era of slop, Forced Entertainment, make a powerful point on the difficulty
to connect, express and even be among the overload of the non-human.
Cold Sweat was a technically impressive and deliberately painful hour and half. It
left me with much to think about, but was it enough to make an hour and a half of
being trapped in an AI purgatory worthwhile?
This show runs at Southbank Centre, London until 10th October. Tickets here.