Keine Menschenseele

Someone dies, but their voice lives on. Not just as an audio recording that can be played on a device, but as a digital revenant. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and massive collections of personal digital data, what sounds like science fiction becomes reality. The Grimme Award-winning and Emmy ®-nominated group Laokoon has invested years in researching AI-generated voices and foresees a future in which conversing with the voices of the dead will be just as normal as speaking to the living. Who are these people who can make their voices heard beyond the grave, while others are damned to be silenced during their lifetime?

In their first production for the Kasino of the Burgtheater, Laokoon experiment with artificial neural networks and create voices that do not require vocal cords. At the centre of the (true) stories on which the play is based are people who are pinning all their hopes on conversations with their undead loved ones, who are haunted by their voices, or who are themselves working towards becoming digitally immortal.