Crashout is an in-development lecture performance/video in which I reenact viral #professorcrashout videos of artificially generated professors imploring their students with slapstick-style contortions to stop using AI in the classroom. Building off of my short film spot healing in which I adapt the persona of an ill-fated software tutorial host who slowly loses agency to the image that he has set out to edit, Crashout takes shape as a lecture performance in which I play the role of a professor lecturing about visual effects and deepfake technology while increasingly ceding control of my own bodily functions to the fake faculty on screen. 

As a professor of digital media, I am fascinated by how these videos, which ironically serve as ads for a wide range of AI companies, employ the professor as an archetypal last bastion against the onslaught of artificial intelligence in academia and beyond. Embodying the videos’ quintessential slapstick style, Crashout uses miming, mixed reality, and endurance to bring humor, empathy, and humanity back into the ever-evolving theatre of the classroom.

CLIPS

PRODUCTION:

STUDENTS:

THOUGHTS/FEEDBACK/QUESTIONS

  • find myself resisting linear structure in early crits—prioritizing a more responsive presentation of the material as opposed to a linear edit.
    • should string together a sequence to test if it works as a linear narrative–and if so, towards what?
  • structure of re-presenting the work will be akin to a lecture, tutorial, artist talk, choreography class, karaoke
    • lecture about what?
    • artist talk about what?
    • tutorial about what?
  • we are seeing all of these videos from the student perspective. why are we redoubling the student perspective? what would it be like to see it from the “professor” perspective?
  • Merel: “you should perform this at a faculty meeting”
  • Who should I perform this in front of and what should I ask them to do?
    • record on their own devices and upload to a central folder?
    • give them devices to record on?
    • film something that appears live?
    • take a quiz
    • complete a survey
  • UnionDocs folx: feels ripe for choreography
    • as someone with no dance background, i feel both “seen” by this and resistant to a fully choreographed sequence that removes the visible learning and failing of repeated movements
  • Connection to former work
    • how does or might this work intersect with explorations of health, diagnosis, disability, and authority
  • Alcove Cinema:
    • project the faculty on me as I perform
    • singular time: important that it feels like one block of time
    • reference: Dance Poem Revolution
    • multiples (overlays)
    • present the research during school
      • including guest lectures