Review | World’s first ‘artificial intelligence opera’ review: Chasing Waterfalls blends live and digital performers seamlessly
- Chasing Waterfalls is a co-production by humans and artificial intelligence whose theme is our collective identity crisis in the digital age
- Presented in Hong Kong, five digital singers performed with soprano Eir Inderhaug, and the production convincingly blurred the digital/physical boundary
We all know how it feels. You are trying to log into your computer, you’ve forgotten the password, and you have to prove that you are you, and not a robot.
Billed as the world’s first “artificial intelligence opera”, Chasing Waterfalls looks at our collective identity crisis during the digital age. It is a bold and original presentation that its German-Hong Kong creative team has adapted for Hong Kong’s New Vision Festival Arts Festival.
In September, it premiered in Germany at the Semperoper Dresden opera house with a live cast of six singers. The New Vision Arts Festival version changed the set and replaced five of the singers with digital versions projected onto a transparent screen at the front of the stage, with a musical ensemble behind it providing live accompaniment.
The original set for the German production consisted of a huge ladder in the middle of the stage from which the cast sang, with water cascading down at one point to highlight the futility of chasing after social media validation.
This version probably had a weaker visual impact. For example, when the five singers representing the different digital egos of the protagonist sang from high up the ladder while looking down at the protagonist (the excellent soprano Eir Inderhaug, the only singer performing in person in Hong Kong), their superiority and dominance over their creator was evident.
