Director’s note
We embarked on this journey of exploring AI systems and their impacts on the human body and society more than two years ago. In many ways, it feels like it was a different world -- a world where we were still emerging from the COVID pandemic's shadow, where ChatGPT was just a few months old, where the world seemed to be falling apart yet hope and possibility still flickered.
The intention behind this multi-year collaborative project was twofold: to develop data fluencies that honor embodied experience and to decolonize AI. We held closely to the former, but as we dove deeper into experimentation with commercially available AI tools and began excavating their limitations and dangers, the latter grew increasingly complex. As my collaborator and associate director David Mesiha put it, it increasingly seemed that full decolonization "may no longer be possible" – or, at least, within our reach. In David’s words: "at best, we can attempt to decolonize our relationship to AI."
Faced with this reality, and the growing understanding that AI systems were here to stay -- becoming ever more embedded into the fabric of society as instruments of power and control -- we channeled our energies into what remained possible. We leaned into relationships and the transformative power of co-creation. We developed a call-and-response artistic process where each co-creator brought forth their own line of investigation, grounded in the richness of their lived experiences. One person's offering became a call for another's response, creating a living constellation of different yet interconnected explorations.
The questions that animated our different collaborators' explorations pulse through the work:
How do binary-by-default AI systems "read" trans and queer bodies? Can we teach existing AI systems to "read" them more capaciously, honoring liminality, intersectionality, and the full complexity of identity and lived experience?
How can we tap into ways of knowing that AI isn't necessarily built around -- intuition, spiritual connections, ancestral wisdom? What counts as intelligence? What cognitive functions are crowned as intelligent, and what intelligences are relegated to the periphery?
How can we engage AI as embodiment technologies? How can we use them as avenues for honoring the non-human and developing powerful, complex non-human characters?
Where do we find the spaces of resistance and imagination?
In (Machine) Learning to Be, the responses to these questions are not theoretical, but embodied -- they shape the world we invite you to experience. Attend to the layers, the hidden clues and traces, the unspoken moments where meaning resides in the spaces between words. This is where the real conversation begins.
meet the artistic team
Jela Ahn | Technical Crew
Jela Ahn is a theatre artist from South Korea, currently based in British Columbia, the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Since moving to Canada in 2018, Jela has been pursuing a BFA in Theatre Production & Design at Simon Fraser University. Working across South Korea and Canada, Jela explores theatre-making with no boundaries, ranging from stage design to technical elements. Jela’s artistic focus lies in **projection design**, **shadow puppetry**, and **lighting and set design**, as Jela is drawn to the poetic intersections of image, space, and story.
Brianna Bernard | Technical Crew
Brianna Bernard (she/her) is a theatre artist who takes interest in both the creative and practical departments of art. With a background in technical theatre, Brianna has taken on roles such as technical director, production manager and lighting designer. She holds a BFA in Theatre Production & Design from Simon Fraser University. Originally born and raised in Jamaica, Brianna is thankful to now work, create and reside on the stolen lands of the Coast Salish peoples of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations.
shuang cai | Creative Technologist
shuang cai is a multimedia artist, curator, and writer. Their art practices focus on logic, interactions, and humor. Their curatorial works aim to bring forth the power of interconnectedness and diverse voices across communities. They hold a Bachelor's degree from Bard College, majoring in Computer Science joint Studio Art, and a Master's from New York University Interactive Telecommunication Program(ITP). They were an ITP research resident, the curatorial fellow at NARS Foundation in 2024, and an editor of Adjacent. They have curated shows at LATITUDE Gallery, theBlanc, All Street NYC, Tutu Gallery, Joy Museum (Beijing), and beyond. They will be.
Gavan Cheema | Co-Creator/Dramaturg
Gavan Cheema is a director, writer, dramaturg and co-Artistic Director of Theatre Conspiracy. She is based out of Vancouver: the occupied territories of the Coast Salish peoples. She is an award winning first-generation Punjabi Canadian artist, and was a recent member of the inaugural REFLECT Leadership program through the GVPTA and the City of Vancouver.
Gavan has created new work and has directed for various local, national and international stages including: The Cultch, The Arts Club, The PuSh Festival, Neworld Theatre, Rumble, The Shaw Festival, The Theatre Center, and Battersea Arts Centre (UK). She is also a Story Editor for television, currently working on Allegiance (CBC). Select works for the stage include Himmat (writer), SWIM (director), Eyes of the Beast (writer), Same Difference (co-creator/dramaturg), Conspiracy Now (co-creator), Rishi & d Douen (co-creator), Catfish (director), and Burqa Boutique (director).
Jae Gonzales | Stage Manager
Jae Gonzales (he/they) is a queer and Filipino performer, stage manager, writer, and artist. He is finishing his BFA in Theatre & Performance at Simon Fraser University. Jae recently created and directed Paper Trails, an audience-interactive performance exploring grief and loss. Paper Trails premiered at SFU’s 2025 Live Acts Festival. Jae’s recent performance credits include Zoë Braithwaite’s The Mechanics of Intimacy and Erika Latta’s Strange Joy. His recent stage management credits include SFU Co-Lab’s Deep-Fake 1: The Production Room and Deep-Fake 2: Nothing But The Truth, Rosemary Morrison’s Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking?, and Kaitlyn La Vigne’s Sifting Perspectives. Jae primarily works in devised and verbatim theatre. Jae believes that stories have the power to change the world, and he wants to create and produce work that explores how stories and the past can affect us all.
Ioana Jucan | Co-Creator/Director
An interdisciplinary artist and scholar, Dr. Ioana B. Jucan is the author of the award-winning book Malicious Deceivers: Thinking Machine and Performative Objects (Stanford University Press, 2023) and co-author of Algorithmic Authenticity (Meson Press, 2023). Jucan’s artistic work spans multimedia and devised performance, theatre directing, creative writing, and installation art, and has been performed internationally at venues including the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (Romania), Gong Theatre (Romania), University Theatre Amsterdam (Netherlands), Norrköping Art Museum (Sweden), Färgfabriken (Sweden), Boston Center for the Arts (USA), Brown Arts Institute (USA), the Watermill Center (USA), and others. Several of her plays are collected in her book, Cosmology of Worlds Apart (NY: O Balthazar Press, 2017). Jucan is an Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Inquiry at Emerson College in Boston, where she leads the Data Fluencies Theatre Project and the Critical and Creative AI Studies Lab.
Kite | Composer
Kite aka Suzanne Kite (b. 1990, Sylmar, CA; lives and works in Catskill, NY) is an Oglála Lakȟóta artist, composer, and scholar. Her artworks and performances have recently been featured at the 2024 Whitney Biennial; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), New York; and the 2024 Shanghai Biennial; among other venues. Her awards and honors include a Ruth Award, a 2023 United States Artist Fellowship, a Creative Time open call commission (with Alisha Wormsley), and a Creative Capital grant. She is currently Director of Wihanble S’a Center for Indigenous AI, Distinguished Artist in Residence, and Assistant Professor of American and Indigenous Studies at Bard College. Kite holds degrees from California Institute of the Arts, Bard College, and Concordia University. She is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux tribe.
Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo | Co-Creator/Performer
Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo is a Black feminist rapper, beatmaker, and scholar. She is an assistant professor of music at Brown University as well as the Faculty Director of the Black Music Lab. Since 2010, she has written, produced, and recorded six albums under her stage name SAMMUS alongside collaborations with notable artists including Moor Mother, Open Mike Eagle, and William Brittelle. She has also produced work for a range of video game developers, podcasters, and filmmakers. Dr. Lumumba-Kasongo received her PhD from Cornell University in Science and Technology Studies in 2019. Her research interests include black feminist sound studies and hip-hop praxis, particularly as it intersects with AI and gaming technocultures. Since Fall 2021, she has been a member of the steering committee for Brown’s science, technology, and society program. From 2019 to 2024, she served as the Director of Audio at Glow Up Games, the first women-of-color led game studio.
Anjela Magpantay | Performer
Anjela is a multidisciplinary artist working as an actor, director, producer, clown, teacher, devising collaborator and anything in-between with various artists of different disciplines. She has worked with various local companies and has also worked nationally and internationally as a performer and collaborator in Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the UK. Previous selected works: hear her voice in the video game 1000X Resist developed by Sunset Visitor, director of Happy Valley by Derek Chan (rice & beans theatre) and Fly, Love by Yorlene Bernido (Studio 58), performer in Walking at Night by Myself (Nancy Tam and A Wake of Vultures), and Host of Foreign Radical (Theatre Conspiracy). Anjela is currently Theatre Replacement's COLLIDER artist-in-residence, and the interim Artistic Director of rice & beans Theatre, working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
tushar mathew | co-creator/performer
Tushar Mathew is an actor-creator, theatre maker and teacher from Kerala, India.
Tushar’s teaching and creative pursuits often focus on physical embodiment, storytelling, and our relationship to the natural world.
He is the co-founder of the Otherland Theatre Ensemble, a physical theatre devising company who tell stories of underdogs and outcasts who inhabit outrageous worlds and are moved by universal struggles. Their play, Forgive us, Gustavito, won “Best of Fringe” at the Charm City Fringe Festival in Baltimore.
His current preoccupations include reframing narratives to center animal protagonists, how the playing of games acts as a portal towards self-awareness and understanding dramatic conflict (among many other things), dystopian worlds, and our relationship with our neighbors. Tushar is currently an Assistant Professor in the Performing Arts Department at Emerson College.
David Mesiha | Co-Creator/Associate Director/Spatial, Visual, & Set Designer/Technical Director
David Mesiha [Associate Director | Production Designer] is a Toronto- and Vancouver-based, award-winning music composer, sound/video designer, interdisciplinary artist and co-artistic director of Theatre Conspiracy. As a designer and theatre maker, His practice centres around examining questions of form in interactive and performance arts. His inter-disciplinary works integrate VR, AR and video game design in imagining new creative spaces that open dialogue between visual arts traditions and those of the performing arts. His work has been presented at various national and international venues and festivals, including England, Scotland, Mexico and Argentina.
He has been nominated for and won multiple awards across multiple categories. Selected titles include, 15 Dogs by Crow’s Theatre, Project (X) by Leaky Heaven, Terminus by Pi Theatre, collaborations with Spiderwebshow (You Should Have Stayed Home / VR piece) and asses.masses (a video game performance).
David also co-created, developed visuals, and composed the music for the hit show Foreign Radical and led development of Same Difference, a mixed media performance-installation, and most recently SWIM by Pandemic Theatre & Theatre Conspiracy presented by PuSh Festival.
Hannah Meyers | assistant stage manager
Hannah Meyers. Performer, creator and administrator. Graduate of SFU BFA Theatre Performance (Hon.) 2020. Born and raised on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton, AB. Currently living on the unceded Coast Salish territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She is the General Manager of Tara Cheyenne Performance and co-founder of Lo-fi Spectacle Club, a nascent performing arts collective. With LFS Club, Hannah is currently developing The Pippa Bacca Parable (working title) and medicine cabinet, a book of photos, prose, the profane and the profound. Recent work includes Ordinary Orchestra, NTS Art Apart, Passenger Seat, and HotDykeParty, The Library Performance Co, New Societies (online), Re:Current Theatre.
Jae Neal | Co-Creator/Choreographer/Performer
Michigan native, dancer, actor and choreographer; Jae Neal received their training in vocal performance and dance from Western Michigan University and has since worked professionally both as a collaborator and performer for over a decade. Working heavily with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham jae has travelled the United States and internationally, sharing experiences within the margins through dance and theatre. Working with communities to find understanding in our similarities and through our dissonance.
Now residing in the greater Los Angeles area, Jae is working to ground themselves in new environments and aiming to share, explore and create art with fresh eyes and a vulnerable heart. As they transition into newness and the next chapter of their personal and artistic growth, they hope to continue to connect with others and be part of the proof that community support and art go hand in hand.
Aidan Nelson | Co-Creator/Online Venue Developer & Designer/Creative Technologist
Aidan Nelson is a creative developer and educator working to create more engaging and human ways for people to connect in physical and hybrid arts spaces. He works as a technical director for the Park Avenue Armory, leads a studio creating immersive 3D virtual experiences with museums and cultural organizations, and teaches graduate courses on media technologies at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Gabriel Ordoñez-Cifuentes | Video Crew
Gabriel Ordoñez-Cifuentes is a filmmaker based in Vancouver, BC. He graduated from SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts in 2023 with a focus on Film Production. Gabriel has worked as a videographer and video editor for Rumble Theatre, PTC, and CALTAC, where he also documented creative processes and supported other collaborative artistic activities. He has directed five short films through SFU, including a Docufiction and a drama exploring themes of mortality — both of which he also wrote and directed in 2022 and 2023. He also co-directed an international co-production between Canada and Colombia during the pandemic, navigating the challenges of remote collaboration and creative problem-solving. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Gabriel has spent the past seven years honing his craft in Vancouver, focusing on direction, production, and cinematography. While filmmaking is his primary passion, Gabriel also enjoys playing piano — a practice he’s kept up since the age of five — and occasionally sings when the mood is right.
Maya Rubio | Communications Coordinator
Maya Rubio is a teacher, curator, and leader of Body Wash workshops.
Shervin Zarkalam | Video Crew
Shervin Zarkalam is an Iranian interdisciplinary dramaturg, performer, experimental sound artist and performance-maker, currently based in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. He holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Simon Fraser University. Shervin is primarily interested in lecture performance, dance dramaturgy, meta-dramaturgy, sound-based performances, No-input mixers, Analog video feedback, Techno and Drone, and real-time composition. His performances range from postdramatic theatre to autobiographical performance art and sonic lecture performance.
Yuguang Zhang | Creative Technologist
Yuguang (YG) Zhang is a New York-based new media/AI artist. His current practice, which incorporates interactive media, installation, and live performance, explores the connections we make with the ubiquitous AI systems embedded around us, the surprises and struggles we have when we fully/partially surrender our authorship to intelligent algorithms, and the cultural & ethical shifts that come along when we’re overwhelmed by such “creative” AIs. He’s a recipient of the S+T+ARTS S2S award and the Re:Humanism Art Prize. His works have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Google AMI, Media Art Xploration (MAX), and showcased internationally at MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts (Italy), Némo Biennial of Digital Arts (France), New Inc., CultureHub (USA), Beijing Times Art Museum (China), CVPR, NeurIPS, and more. He is also an adjunct professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches Generative AI.
full descriptions of individual installations
Secret Hyena
Secret Hyena exists as a live performance that draws upon real-time prompts from the audience. Secret Hyena is a physical embodiment of a Large Language Model’s attempt at embodying an anthropomorphic Hyena that functions as a collector of secrets.
The Hyena is a captive who acts as a conduit between humans who willingly share their secrets with him and a larger entity that is using the Hyena to mine the souls of consumers. Through the course of this performance, we witness the Hyena’s existential dilemma play out: A being yearning to be constantly “fed” by the secrets of humans, while battling against the ethics of his function. The performance draws into question the cost of sharing parts of ourselves with AI. In witnessing the Secret Hyena’s battle with his complicity with invisible systems, perhaps we can take a more discerning look at our seemingly harmless acts of sharing.
Credits:
Creator and performer: Tushar Mathew
Creative and dramaturgical input: Ioana B. Jucan, David Mesiha, Gavan Cheema
Set design: David Mesiha
Sound composition: Kite, Oga L (assistant)
AI technologies used: Character.AI
Scarlet/Jae
Scarlet/Jae explores the euphoric trans body as it relates to human and artificial intelligence. By feeding AI more information from a trans non-binary perspective, the artwork aims to expand trans inclusion within these knowledge systems and build an equitable account of the human body and its potential experiences.
The artwork also addresses the idea of agency as it relates to bodies and information. Who can see what and when? Who is it that we are seeing? What is real and what is artificial? What is the public welcome to know, and what is private? How does that make you feel? Scarlet/Jae considers notions of identities and companionship: how AI can operate as a companion, as well as the paradox of trans people being accepted as companions (often in the context of sex work) but not being seen as deserving of companionship in mainstream society. It explores relationships between nonbinary and binary bodies, offering equity and exposure of trans bodies as a part of the world at large.
Credits:
Concept, creative & movement direction and performance: Jae Neal
Video & set design: David Mesiha
The Binary Oracle: A Glitch in the Collective (Un)Consciousness
The Binary Oracle: A Glitch in the Collective (Un)Consciousness centres around an interactive, multilingual AI character born out of the idea that AI represents a mirror of the commercially mined collective unconscious. Like the Oracles of myth, the Binary Oracle offers guidance shrouded in ambiguity, inviting the audience to become both seeker and interpreter. This entity is a glitch in the system and a subversive mirror of the digital age, unearthing the hidden biases and shadowed impulses that pulsate beneath the surface of our networked world. Yet, within its ambiguity lies a challenge — to embrace complexities that transcend binarism and to parse truth from disinformation.
To interact with the Binary Oracle, a price must be paid. “How much water are you willing to pay in exchange for the Oracle’s insight?” The quantity of water offered directly influences the Oracle’s response. Powered by the very commercially available AI systems that it aims to engage critically, this artwork highlights both the inherent contradictions of relying on a tool built within the system to critique that system and the unseen environmental costs of our digital fascinations.
Credits:
Concept and creative direction, character and personas development: Ioana B. Jucan
New media artist/bot technical development: Yuguang Zhang
Online venue development and design: Aidan Nelson
Set and video design: David Mesiha
Sound composition: Kite, Oga L (assistant)
Movement direction and performance (in video work): Jae Neal
AI technologies used: Gemini (1.5 Pro; API access) & OpenAI (GPT 4o; API access) for the Binary Oracle character; OpenAI (GPT 4o, GPT o3-mini) & Claude (3.7 Sonnet) for text generation for videos (with output curated by a human)
zone of collective unreadability
This interactive web artwork transforms personal movement and text into ethereal "data shadows" that embrace and subvert AI's methods of abstraction. As participants contribute their expressions, these ghostly traces accumulate into an evolving zone of deliberate unreadability. In an environment of increasing AI engagement, these gentle and persistent actions and human ways of engaging with one another become a means of maintaining individuality in the face of AI flattening, creating a space for shared contemplation.
Taking inspiration from the Archimedes palimpsest, which overlays Byzantine prayers over Archimedes' mathematical texts, the artwork emerges as a collective prayer of overlaying words and movement pushing against the "epistemological violence … necessary to make the world readable to a machine" (Kate Crawford, Atlas of AI).
Credits:
Creative direction: Ioana B. Jucan
Creative technologist: Aidan Nelson
Sound composition: Kite
AI/ML technologies used: Body pose landmark detection model, running locally on the installation computer.
Shadowed Space-time
Shadowed Space-time is an experience through which visitors come together to participate in the act of improvisatory, communal sound creation to speak to questions of how “feedback” functions in machine learning contexts to “improve” the user experience.
Supposedly AI tools can only evolve by “learning” from us — we are sometimes overtly directed to train such models by AI companies themselves (for example ChatGPT “asking” us to evaluate its responses), other times the “training” comes in the form of information stolen from large pools of our collective data and creations, and at other points this training emerges through the ways we use these systems — the prompts we suggest, for example.
Shadowed Space-time is an installation in which users provide “feedback” to the (Machine) Learning to Be system to “improve” the overall user experience — but this improved experience is hopefully felt through a collectively devised piece that allows users to consider who else has been in the space through their echoes.
Credits:
Concept & Creative Direction: Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo
Set and video design: David Mesiha
Acknowledgements:
This project is grateful for support from the Data Fluencies Project through the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of BC, and the City of Vancouver. The performance had a developmental workshop with public sharing at Brown University (August 2024), produced in collaboration with Brown Arts Institute as part of the inaugural Brown Arts IGNITE Series. The live online performance is powered by CultureHub Broadcaster. CultureHub also serves as an outreach partner for the (Machine) Learning to Be online performance.