\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA journalist finds himself in the woods.\u201d Marc Da Costa, a digital artist with a Ph.D. in anthropology, was speaking from the controls of an artificial intelligence-driven video installation at the Onassis Foundation\u2019s ONX Studio<\/a>, a high-tech media lab in the Olympic Tower in Midtown Manhattan. He was talking to the computer that runs this installation. About me.<\/p>\n \u201cA huge fleet of food delivery bicycles appears,\u201d Da Costa continued, spinning a nonsense tale the A.I. would soon render onscreen. \u201cThe heavens open and a galactic, friendly being comes down with a scepter. Frank and the galactic being meet the delivery drivers and share a meal under the forest canopy. \u2026 \u201d<\/p>\n Moments later, a fleet of food delivery bicycles did indeed appear on the three enormous video screens that surrounded us, the whole scene rendered in a charmingly nostalgic style suggestive of travel posters from a century ago. Attached to the handlebars of each bike was a wicker basket overflowing with bounty. The forest, though entirely computer-generated, looked green and inviting. The tale was narrated in dulcet tones by a seemingly Oxbridge-educated fembot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Da Costa was demonstrating \u201cThe Golden Key,\u201d one of four digital video installations on view in a black box theater at the Brooklyn Academy of Music\u2019s Fisher building. Collectively known as Techne<\/a>, the installations are closing out the latest edition of BAM\u2019s Next Wave Festival with the kind of innovative offerings the organization thought it needed after reducing its programming and laying off 13 percent of its staff<\/a> in 2023.<\/p>\n Techne, which runs through Jan. 19, is a festival within a festival. It is curated and primarily funded by Onassis ONX, a digital culture initiative by the Onassis Foundation, which built the studio and makes its multimillion-dollar facilities available to dozens of artists for free.<\/p>\n The series opened on Saturday with \u201cThe Vivid Unknown,\u201d an A.I.-driven reimagining by John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio of Reggio\u2019s 1982 film \u201cKoyaanisqatsi.\u201d<\/a> Next up is \u201cThe Golden Key,\u201d which takes its name from a story by the Brothers Grimm, a short tale that invited readers to devise their own ending more than 200 years ago. It will be followed by \u201cVoices,\u201d<\/a> a foray into the spirit world by Margarita Athanasiou<\/a>, a video artist based in Athens, and \u201cSecret Garden,\u201d<\/a> a collection of Black women\u2019s stories of achievement assembled by Stephanie Dinkins<\/a>, a Brooklyn artist. With the exception of \u201cVoices,\u201d each is interactive, either by sensing the audience\u2019s response or, in the case of \u201cThe Golden Key,\u201d by taking input directly through computer kiosks on the floor of the theater space.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The best of these use A.I. to critique technology \u2014 \u201ca machine that\u2019s out of control,\u201d as Fitzgerald called it. Like \u201cKoyaanisqatsi\u201d \u2014 whose title is a Hopi word that translates roughly to \u201clife out of balance\u201d \u2014 \u201cThe Vivid Unknown\u201d is a mostly wordless panoply of sound and images signifying humanity\u2019s divorce from nature. But unlike the original film, the A.I. version contains no actual photography and no music by Philip Glass; it\u2019s generated by software that was trained on Reggio\u2019s film and Glass\u2019s score.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Fitzgerald first saw \u201cKoyaanisqatsi\u201d in 2001, when he was an anthropology major at Brown University. He quickly switched to film studies, and before long he was projecting \u201cKoyaanisqatsi\u201d on the ceiling of his room at home. \u201cMy intention was to step inside the experience,\u201d he said as we sat at ONX. \u201cIt was one of the first times I was thinking about immersive storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, a couple of years ago, he got an introduction to Reggio, who by that time was in his 80s and living in Santa Fe, N.M., but no longer traveling. \u201cWho goes to Santa Fe to have coffee with someone?\u201d Fitzgerald said. \u201cBut I did it on a whim.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe Vivid Unknown\u201d and the other installations in Techne came to BAM by way of the organization\u2019s former president, Karen Brooks Hopkins, who retired in 2015. Now a board member of the Onassis Foundation\u2019s U.S. branch, she was the person ONX turned to when it was seeking a large, public venue to display the work created in its lab.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of the time you\u2019ve seen this immersive-type stuff in big spectacles,\u201d Hopkins said in a phone interview, recalling lightshows that purport to immerse you in works by Van Gogh, for instance. \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do here is bring it full-on into the performing arts,\u201d where it could, among other things, be instrumental in attracting today\u2019s equivalent of the black-clad hipsters who ventured out to Brooklyn in search of the new and experimental 40 years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Like many arts organizations, BAM is still recovering from the pandemic and the drop in attendance and fund-raising that resulted. It has also suffered from churn at the top: Its president, Gina Duncan, took over in 2022, and its artistic director, Amy Cassello, assumed her current position just six months ago after filling in on an interim basis when her predecessor, the theater producer David Binder, left after four years on the job.<\/p>\n With 11 events this season, Next Wave seems to be on the rebound<\/a> from its nadir in 2023, when only eight works were presented, but that\u2019s still far below the 31 that were staged in 2017. \u201cWe try not to count,\u201d Cassello joked when we met at a Brooklyn cafe.<\/p>\n Before he left, Binder made digital media a priority for BAM. Though Cassello has followed his lead, she seems an unlikely champion. \u201cI still don\u2019t understand how it works,\u201d she said of \u201cThe Golden Key,\u201d \u201cbut I appreciate that you could participate, and the variety of outcomes is quite amazing.\u201d And her views on A.I. in general? \u201cI would put myself in the resistant category, but I trust people who are smarter than myself.\u201d<\/p>\n On the face of it, \u201cThe Golden Key\u201d is a digital toy you can interact with to generate wild yarns. But on a deeper level it offers, as Da Costa put during the preview at the Olympic Tower, \u201can encounter with a future in which machines are telling us stories\u201d \u2014 in this case, faux folk tales.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After feeding a massive index of folklore<\/a> to their A.I., Da Costa and his co-creator, Matthew Niederhauser, programmed it to simulate the kind of stories that, for centuries and across widely separated civilizations, have told us who we are and where we come from. \u201cMythology is our common basis for making sense of the world,\u201d Da Costa said as his system surrounded us with beguiling yet empty fabrications. But what if someone set up autonomous A.I. systems that operated on an industrial scale to fabricate stories that were meaningless or, worse, false?<\/p>\n Much has been written about the havoc social media has wrought, in part because social media companies\u2019 overriding goal is to maximize engagement, and therefore profits. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t take much to think about who is going to be in control of these tools,\u201d Da Costa said. \u201cWhat are going to be the economic interests behind that, and the political interests?\u201d<\/p>\n Niederhauser, who had been listening in by video call, added, \u201cThis is not a time for artists to retreat from technology. It\u2019s a super important time to engage and try to make you think critically about how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n Techne (presented by BAM, Onassis<\/strong> and<\/strong> Under the Radar)<\/strong><\/p>\n Through Jan. 19 at BAM Fisher, 321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn; bam.org\/new-media\/2024\/techne<\/a>. \u201cThe Vivid Unknown\u201d (Jan. 4\u20135 and 7); \u201cThe Golden Key\u201d(Jan. 8\u201311); \u201cVoices\u201d (Jan. 12 and 14\u201315); \u201cSecret Garden\u201d (Jan. 16\u201319).<\/p>\n Jan. 7 at 7:30 p.m.: Special screening of \u201cKoyaanisqatsi\u201d at BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, followed by a Q. and A. with <\/em>John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n