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Prepare for the Textpocalypse
3/8/23

By Matthew Kirschenbaum

What if, in the end, we are done in not by intercontinental ballistic missiles or climate change, not by microscopic pathogens or a mountain-size meteor, but by … text? Simple, plain, unadorned text, but in quantities so immense as to be all but unimaginable—a tsunami of text swept into a self-perpetuating cataract of content that makes it functionally impossible to reliably communicate in any digital setting?

Our relationship to the written word is fundamentally changing. So-called generative artificial intelligence has gone mainstream through programs like ChatGPT, which use large language models, or LLMs, to statistically predict the next letter or word in a sequence, yielding sentences and paragraphs that mimic the content of whatever documents they are trained on. They have brought something like autocomplete to the entirety of the internet. For now, people are still typing the actual prompts for these programs and, likewise, the models are still (mostly) trained on human prose instead of their own machine-made opuses.

But circumstances could change—as evidenced by the release last week of an API for ChatGPT, which will allow the technology to be integrated directly into web applications such as social media and online shopping. It is easy now to imagine a setup wherein machines could prompt other machines to put out text ad infinitum, flooding the internet with synthetic text devoid of human agency or intent: gray goo, but for the written word.

Exactly that scenario already played out on a small scale when, last June, a tweaked version of GPT-J, an open-source model, was patched into the anonymous message board 4chan and posted 15,000 largely toxic messages in 24 hours. Say someone sets up a system for a program like ChatGPT to query itself repeatedly and automatically publish the output on websites or social media; an endlessly iterating stream of content that does little more than get in everyone’s way, but that also (inevitably) gets absorbed back into the training sets for models publishing their own new content on the internet. What if lots of people—whether motivated by advertising money, or political or ideological agendas, or just mischief-making—were to start doing that, with hundreds and then thousands and perhaps millions or billions of such posts every single day flooding the open internet, commingling with search results, spreading across social-media platforms, infiltrating Wikipedia entries, and, above all, providing fodder to be mined for future generations of machine-learning systems? Major publishers are already experimenting: The tech-news site CNET has published dozens of stories written with the assistance of AI in hopes of attracting traffic, more than half of which were at one point found to contain errors. We may quickly find ourselves facing a textpocalypse, where machine-written language becomes the norm and human-written prose the exception.

Like the prized pen strokes of a calligrapher, a human document online could become a rarity to be curated, protected, and preserved. Meanwhile, the algorithmic underpinnings of society will operate on a textual knowledge base that is more and more artificial, its origins in the ceaseless churn of the language models. Think of it as an ongoing planetary spam event, but unlike spam—for which we have more or less effective safeguards—there may prove to be no reliable way of flagging and filtering the next generation of machine-made text. “Don’t believe everything you read” may become “Don’t believe anything you read” when it’s online.

This is an ironic outcome for digital text, which has long been seen as an empowering format. In the 1980s, hackers and hobbyists extolled the virtues of the text file: an ASCII document that flitted easily back and forth across the frail modem connections that knitted together the dial-up bulletin-board scene. More recently, advocates of so-called minimal computing have endorsed plain text as a format with a low carbon footprint that is easily shareable regardless of platform constraints.

But plain text is also the easiest digital format to automate. People have been doing it in one form or another since the 1950s. Today the norms of the contemporary culture industry are well on their way to the automation and algorithmic optimization of written language. Content farms that churn out low-quality prose to attract adware employ these tools, but they still depend on legions of under- or unemployed creatives to string characters into proper words, words into legible sentences, sentences into coherent paragraphs. Once automating and scaling up that labor is possible, what incentive will there be to rein it in?

William Safire, who was among the first to diagnose the rise of “content” as a unique internet category in the late 1990s, was also perhaps the first to point out that content need bear no relation to truth or accuracy in order to fulfill its basic function, which is simply to exist; or, as Kate Eichhorn has argued in a recent book about content, to circulate. That’s because the appetite for “content” is at least as much about creating new targets for advertising revenue as it is actual sustenance for human audiences. This is to say nothing of even darker agendas, such as the kind of information warfare we now see across the global geopolitical sphere. The AI researcher Gary Marcus has demonstrated the seeming ease with which language models are capable of generating a grotesquely warped narrative of January 6, 2021, which could be weaponized as disinformation on a massive scale.

There’s still another dimension here. Text is content, but it’s a special kind of content—meta-content, if you will. Beneath the surface of every webpage, you will find text—angle-bracketed instructions, or code—for how it should look and behave. Browsers and servers connect by exchanging text. Programming is done in plain text. Images and video and audio are all described—tagged—with text called metadata. The web is much more than text, but everything on the web is text at some fundamental level.

For a long time, the basic paradigm has been what we have termed the “read-write web.” We not only consumed content but could also produce it, participating in the creation of the web through edits, comments, and uploads. We are now on the verge of something much more like a “write-write web”: the web writing and rewriting itself, and maybe even rewiring itself in the process. (ChatGPT and its kindred can write code as easily as they can write prose, after all.)

We face, in essence, a crisis of never-ending spam, a debilitating amalgamation of human and machine authorship. From Finn Brunton’s 2013 book, Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet, we learn about existing methods for spreading spurious content on the internet, such as “bifacing” websites which feature pages that are designed for human readers and others that are optimized for the bot crawlers that populate search engines; email messages composed as a pastiche of famous literary works harvested from online corpora such as Project Gutenberg, the better to sneak past filters (“litspam”); whole networks of blogs populated by autonomous content to drive links and traffic (“splogs”); and “algorithmic journalism,” where automated reporting (on topics such as sports scores, the stock-market ticker, and seismic tremors) is put out over the wires. Brunton also details the origins of the botnets that rose to infamy during the 2016 election cycle in the U.S. and Brexit in the U.K.

All of these phenomena, to say nothing of the garden-variety Viagra spam that used to be such a nuisance, are functions of text—more text than we can imagine or contemplate, only the merest slivers of it ever glimpsed by human eyeballs, but that clogs up servers, telecom cables, and data centers nonetheless: “120 billion messages a day surging in a gray tide of text around the world, trickling through the filters, as dull as smog,” as Brunton puts it.

We have often talked about the internet as a great flowering of human expression and creativity. Nothing less than a “world wide web” of buzzing connectivity. But there is a very strong argument that, probably as early as the mid-1990s, when corporate interests began establishing footholds, it was already on its way to becoming something very different. Not just commercialized in the usual sense—the very fabric of the network was transformed into an engine for minting capital. Spam, in all its motley and menacing variety, teaches us that the web has already been writing itself for some time. Now all of the necessary logics—commercial, technological, and otherwise—may finally be in place for an accelerated textpocalypse.

“An emergency need arose for someone to write 300 words of [allegedly] funny stuff for an issue of @outsidemagazine we’re closing. I bashed it out on the Chiclet keys of my laptop during the first half of the Super Bowl *while* drinking a beer,” Alex Heard, Outside’s editorial director, tweeted last month. “Surely this is my finest hour.”

The tweet is self-deprecating humor with a touch of humblebragging, entirely unremarkable and innocuous as Twitter goes. But, popping up in my feed as I was writing this very article, it gave me pause. Writing is often unglamorous. It is labor; it is a job that has to get done, sometimes even during the big game. Heard’s tweet captured the reality of an awful lot of writing right now, especially written content for the web: task-driven, completed to spec, under deadlines and external pressure.

That enormous mid-range of workaday writing—content—is where generative AI is already starting to take hold. The first indicator is the integration into word-processing software. ChatGPT will be tested in Office; it may also soon be in your doctor’s notes or your lawyer’s brief. It is also possibly a silent partner in something you’ve already read online today. Unbelievably, a major research university has acknowledged using ChatGPT to script a campus-wide email message in response to the mass shooting at Michigan State. Meanwhile, the editor of a long-running science-fiction journal released data that show a dramatic uptick in spammed submissions beginning late last year, coinciding with ChatGPT’s rollout. (Days later he was forced to close submissions altogether because of the deluge of automated content.) And Amazon has seen an influx of titles that claim ChatGPT “co-authorship” on its Kindle Direct platform, where the economies of scale mean even a handful of sales will make money.

Whether or not a fully automated textpocalypse comes to pass, the trends are only accelerating. From a piece of genre fiction to your doctor’s report, you may not always be able to presume human authorship behind whatever it is you are reading. Writing, but more specifically digital text—as a category of human expression—will become estranged from us.

The “Properties” window for the document in which I am working lists a total of 941 minutes of editing and some 60 revisions. That’s more than 15 hours. Whole paragraphs have been deleted, inserted, and deleted again—all of that before it even got to a copy editor or a fact-checker.

Am I worried that ChatGPT could have done that work better? No. But I am worried it may not matter. Swept up as training data for the next generation of generative AI, my words here won’t be able to help themselves: They, too, will be fossil fuel for the coming textpocalypse.

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Matthew Kirschenbaum is a professor of English and digital studies at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing (Harvard University Press, 2016) and Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).

 

AI Melds With Musical Tradition in Violin Teaching Platform
2/23/23

By Maryland Today Staff 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes students need an instructional pick-me-up between violin lessons. Others can’t afford as many lessons as their talent merits, or they live in a place where violin teachers are in short supply.

A new artificial intelligence-powered system under development by a University of Maryland classical violinist and a computer scientist with expertise in robotics and computer vision could fill in those gaps.

“Our project combines the expertise of traditional violin pedagogy with artificial intelligence and machine learning technology,” said Irina Muresanu, an internationally known concert violinist and an associate professor of violin in the School of Music. “Our aim is to ultimately create software that will be able to provide guidance for all string instruments, and even other instruments.”

The system is not designed to replace human expertise, but to augment it, the researchers say.

“Our system will observe the players using vision and audio, and will analyze the playing in order to give the appropriate feedback, and also to give suggestions on what to practice,” said Cornelia Fermüller, a research scientist with the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and the Computer Vision Laboratory.

The research is funded by a 2021 Maryland Innovation Initiative Award, as well as a Grand Challenges Team Project grant announced last week.

(Video produced by Maria Herd M.A. '19)

Catherine Knight Steele Named Top Higher Education IT Influencer
6/27/22

Anyone who works in higher education knows the value of IT. Colleges and universities are entering a new normal for education, and it’s up to technology leaders to guide them into this new frontier. From hybrid learning to cybersecurity, universities are facing new challenges, making new investments, and learning new skills and lessons along the way.

For our 2022 list of higher ed IT influencers to follow, EdTech: Focus on Higher Education chose 30 people using their platforms to propel universities forward. Whether they’re working with educators to boost their digital teaching skills or promoting diversity and inclusivity in collegiate esports, these influencers are making waves at their institutions. Take a look at this year’s list of higher education IT leaders, bloggers, podcasters and social media personalities and give them a follow.

Catherine Knight SteeleCatherine Knight Steele

In addition to her role as assistant professor of communication at University of Maryland, College Park, Catherine Knight Steele is director of the university’s Black Communication and Technology Lab, where her research focuses on Black culture and discourse and digital communication. She is the author of Digital Black Feminism, a book that explores the relationship between Black women and the past, present and future of technology.


Website: Catherine Knight Steele  

Click below to read the full article and see the other Top 30 Influcencers to Follow in 2022.

Hearing Echoes of Battle to Get Seat Belts to ‘Click’
4/18/22

By Jessica Weiss ’05

A deadly public scourge. A fight pitting government safety mandates against personal freedom. And over time, growing popular acceptance of a solution that was a shot in the arm for public health.

If this sounds like the COVID-19 vaccine controversy, think again. Beginning in the 1950s, engineers, drivers, passengers, regulators and politicians in the United States entered into highly charged deliberations over whether seat belts and speed limits should become mandatory. Today most of the country has 90% seat belt use, and a University of Maryland historian is digging into the historical controversy with an eye to its present-day echoes.

“It’s hard now to imagine a time when seat belts would be controversial, but there was a vivid, expensive and passionate debate about road safety and the lack thereof,” said Associate Professor Thomas Zeller, a specialist in environmental history and the history of technology.

Zeller was recently named a 2022–23 Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and will start in September on a project to explore this history. He will have access to the National Museum of American History’s artifacts, archival collections and library resources, including physical seat belts and guidebooks on highway safety.

Airplane pilots had already been using seat belts for decades when the push to make them standard in cars began to take hold in the 1950s. By 1955, some 100 people were dying on the roads each day. Despite increasing public health research showing that seat belts saved lives in crashes, many people argued against them, focusing on their potential to cause internal injuries or to make it more difficult to escape a burning or submerged car. Other opponents said that regardless of safety implications, it should be a personal choice instead of a requirement.

In a 1966 speech, former President Lyndon Johnson dubbed the high number of deaths on the nation’s roads “the highway disease.” Laws that began to require seat belts in the 1960s—including a federal law requiring “lap and shoulder belts” in all new cars starting in 1968—were portrayed by some as attacks on personal liberty. Critics of laws that instituted fines for not buckling up in the 1980s likened them to encroaching totalitarianism. At the time, only 14% of Americans used seat belts.

Zeller plans to examine scores of archived letters to the editor commenting on proposed laws and mandates from the 1960s to the 1980s. He’ll also explore the role of several public safety campaigns, such as those featuring famed crash test dummies Vince and Larry. The dummies are part of the National Museum of American History collections, along with seat belts, alcohol detection devices and other objects related to automobile safety.

He said exploring this history will shed light on the present, as Americans are once again divided on how much power the government should have to protect public welfare, even if it means taking away rights.

In recent months, some doctors and public health officials have even compared vaccines to seat belts in their ability to significantly decrease the risk of COVID-19.

“The story of public health is sometimes about doing something for the collective good that requires individuals to change their behavior,” Zeller said. “And that’s the underlying tension.”

ARHU Accepting Proposals for ArtsAMP Collaborative Grants
1/24/22

The College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) at the University of Maryland is seeking proposals for the new ArtsAMP Collaborative Grants, which will support the development of artistic or arts-related work created in collaboration between investigators from at least two distinct fields of study.

Description:
Arts for All is a campus-wide initiative that seeks to: (1) make the arts at the University of Maryland increasingly accessible to—and representative of—all students, (2) connect the arts to other disciplines, especially the sciences, and (3) ensure that the arts are meaningfully engaged with issues of social justice and the grand challenges of our time. ArtsAMP Collaborative Grants are designed to support collaboration between faculty in the arts and faculty in other disciplines as they move to advance these goals by creating new artistic work, new scholarship on the arts, and new classes that further the creative experience of students. 

Eligibility:
Teams of tenure- and/or professional-track faculty (graduate students may be a part of faculty led teams). In most cases, one team member will have a primary appointment in the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU), and one other team member will come from a separate department at the University of Maryland, either within or beyond ARHU. 

Requirements:
ArtsAMP Collaborative Grants may be used to support the development of artistic or arts-related work created in collaboration between investigators from at least two distinct fields of study— normally from at least two different units, departments, or colleges—and which combine the talents and expertise of at least two distinct disciplines. Grants may be used to support research and creative projects at any stage of development, and while all kinds of collaborative, arts-based work will be considered, preference will be given to projects that (1) make the arts more accessible and inclusive, (2) amplify the connection of the arts to social justice, or (3) combine creative expertise with technology. Funding may be used to support collaborative research and creative projects that result in original works of art, performances, digital experiences, or research on the arts. We also welcome proposals for the development of cross-disciplinary, collaboratively-taught courses where the creative process is placed in dialogue with other forms of inquiry. Such courses might partner faculty in the arts with those in the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences, or other disciplines. Funds are intended to support work on innovative, collaborative, and artistic projects, and will be paid directly to the collaborators. 

How to Apply:
Please combine all of the following into a single pdf and submit by email to pwarfiel@umd.edu by 5 p.m. on March 15, 2022. All materials should be single-spaced, with one-inch margins and 12-point font.

  1. Contacts: Names, titles, programs, and contact information for all collaborators (one page).
     
  2. Project Description: Summarize the proposed project’s objectives, outcomes, and connections to Arts for All. Explain how two or more disciplines will interact to create new creative experiences, knowledge, or pedagogies (three pages maximum).
     
  3. Collaborator Profile: Provide a summary of the skills, talents, and approaches of each collaborator (two pages maximum).

Post Award Expectations:
A three to four page report summarizing the work and offering suggestions for future grants will be required one semester after the award. Awardees will also be invited to present their work at an ArtAMP Colloquium. Awardees must acknowledge Arts for All in any reports, presentations or materials produced by the funding. Pending available resources, we hope to provide additional funding for awardees to finalize and publish or present projects and run courses.

For questions, contact Patrick Warfield at pwarfiel@umd.edu.

UMD pioneers immersive media design major, merging computer science and art
9/30/21

By Christine Zhu

The University of Maryland is debuting an immersive media design major this semester, the first undergraduate program in the country that synthesizes art with computer science.

There are two tracks available in the program: an art track leading to a bachelor’s of arts degree from the college of arts and humanities, and a computer science track leading to a bachelor’s of science degree from the college of computer, mathematical and natural sciences.

The program works with creating virtual and augmented realities, offering a wide variety of courses for whichever track a student wants to take. 

One of the classes, Introduction to Immersive Media, covers history and research in the field. Its projects involve sensors, augmented reality and virtual reality.

Another class, Introduction to Computational Media, teaches students about the computing that’s required for each type of media. For example, imagery deals with computer graphics and sound deals with synthetic audio.

“We’re investigating ways to use modern technology and media to take the place of information that you would perceive with your senses in a natural environment,” said Stevens Miller, an adjunct lecturer in the department of computer science. 

As a result, students can create artificial environments where they control interactions with the senses — sight, sound and even touch and smell in some cases.

Studio arts lecturer Mollye Bendell used the Artechouse, an art center in Washington, D.C., as an example of a virtual reality experience that uses immersive media design. 

“[It’s] a gallery that specializes in the intersection of art and technology,” she said. “[An example is] an augmented reality application where you’re looking through the camera on your phone and … you see a 3D model appear.”

An immersive media design exhibit was held at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center as a part of NextNOW Fest in mid-September. About 15 students displayed their projects, Bendell said. 

In one student’s project, people were able to play chess remotely with others around the world, Miller said. 

“Instead of being limited to a two-dimensional point and click-with-your-mouse way of interacting with the chessboard, you actually saw a three-dimensional chess set in front of you that you could manipulate even though it doesn’t actually exist,” he added.

While all immersive design students need to have coding ability, the computer science track covers more of the technical components while the art track focuses on the perceptive side, Miller said.

Sophomore Maggie Letvin, a studio art major and hopeful immersive media design major, is planning on the art track. She’s used to approaching projects from the angle of an artist, and said that programming was hard for them.

“[With] programming, you have to know what you want to do ahead of time,” she said. “I approach art from a standpoint of, ‘I have the materials, I’m just gonna work with my hands and figure out what happens,’ but you can’t exactly do that with coding.”

In later years, students from the art track are paired with students from the computer science track. As a result, students are able to work with a partner from a different background and learn more from each other.

All the Screen’s a Stage: A Transmedia Manifesto
9/22/21

BY 

This is not a manifesto for digital theatre. Theatre has used digital technology on- and offstage for over a century, so can we please move on? This is a manifesto for the future of anti-racist, anti-oppressive, accessible theatre with the assistance of creative digital practices. The emergence of digital platforming over the pandemic provides us the opportunity to redefine and recontextualize space, gathering, inclusion, and connectivity that tears at the fabric of gatekeeping. Not all of these practices are effective, but they are irrefutably expansive.

Jared Mezzocchi performs “Someone Else’s House.”

You see, the term “digital theatre” does not propose a new form of theatremaking. It instead refers to a vision of technological extensionism that can aid the dismantling of white supremacy and oppressive practices that the industry is now belatedly reckoning with. Can we, the theatre industry, allow these newly discovered digital resources to expand our audiences, democratize our processes, create a sustainable discipline amid climate change, and revitalize our gatherings and civic duties as theatre practitioners in a (hopefully) post-pandemic, technologically saturated culture?

That is the question digital theatre asked our industry over the last 18 months of this multifaceted plague. In March 2020, the live theatre industry shut down due to COVID-19. It was a moment of subtraction and erasure for those who were currently working in the field. It also was a great equalizer, as those who once could create theatre were suddenly just as shut out as those who never could. In this moment of pause, technologists stepped forward with innovative opportunities to create, collaborate, and connect once again. They took a technologically foreign, ever-expansive frontier and helped define it into an accessible, site-specific platform: the digital online. Their work raised the question: Does theatre need an in-person venue to maintain its identity as theatre?

Answers came in many forms. Geffen Playhouse produced seven fully digital online shows (including my show, directed by Margot Bordelon, Someone Else’s House) as a part of their Stayhouse Series, which brought in live audiences to nightly performances who were mailed a package as a participatory element that was interactive. Joshua Gelb’s Theater In Quarantine produced several livestreams from a closet in his apartment (winning a Drama League Award). Fake Friends’ This American Wife and Circle Jerk (a Pulitzer finalist!) were live, studio-style experimental performances, blending livestream and Twitter as means of engaging their audiences in real time. In addition to Someone Else’s House, I helped create live works like Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm (co-directed with Elizabeth Williamson through Theatreworks Hartford, TheatreSquared Arkansas, The Civilians), Caryl Churchill’s What If If Then (co-directed with Les Waters through NAATCO), and Manic Monologues (an interactive web portal with performances by 20-plus actors, directed by Elena Araoz through Princeton University and McCarter Theater). Many of these experimented with live performance, live design, live audiences both visible and hidden, and with various forms of interactivity. Many more offered on-demand streaming, allowing audiences to view the work in an asynchronous way as well. 

As these digital works were shared, a debate began. Many argued that the identity of theatre inherently belonged to a live, in-person engagement among gathered audiences and storytellers within a shared space. Many argued that digital theatre was not that.

Taking these one by one: If liveness is the essence of theatre, the digital can maintain this identity by livestreaming. If gathering is the essence of theatre, the digital can maintain this identity through myriad softwares and forums: Zoom, Twitch, Discord, Unity, Virtual Reality, Vimeo, Twitter, TikTok, etc. 

Mia Katigbak in ‘Russian Troll Farm.’

The argument that shared space is essential to theatre is closer to the heart of what splinters the theatre community. Many feel that theatre is defined by bodies—those of artists and audiences—occupying the same physical space. This argument is centered around the importance of the ability to experience a live event in the same room as others. In 2017, the University College of London published a study presenting that when we witness a live event together, our heartbeats synchronize, and everyone in the room is, in a sense, feeling the same thing together. This powerful phenomenon is often referred to as “sacred” and “vital.” As a theatregoer myself, I agree: It is very much sacred and vital to share a space with other heartbeats that become synchronized with my own heart as actions play out in front of our eyes in the same room at the same time. It is profoundly moving.

But digital theatre does not refute that, nor does it threaten to diminish that profundity with its own unique existence. The question for live, in-person theatre, though, is this: If theatre’s identity has mostly to do with bodies in the same physical space, what of those who are prohibited from or unable to share that space at any given time for various reasons? Inaccessibility takes many forms: the lack of availability, affordability, physical ability, cultural reference, proximity. What is the answer of the theatre field to this challenge? Theatre venues can lower the barriers to that physical space by complying with ADA requirements, hosting “relaxed” performances, pay-what-you-can evenings, etc.

Theatre venues can also embrace digital. In October 2020, JCA Arts Marketing published findings that digital theater attracted 43 percent new audiences to theatre. Nearly half of the audiences who clicked on events were distinct from those who regularly attend in-person performances. This is a very powerful discovery. Moreover, the demographics of these clicking audiences have shown a wider diversity in class, race, gender, and age. By liberating ourselves from the location of a venue at a specific time with often prohibitive ticket prices, digital accessibility has the potential to crack open a wider demographic of theatre patrons in a profoundly expansive way. 

Another overlooked equity unique to online performance is in the audience’s live response to the work. Digital performance allows some viewers to be verbal and active, others to be silent, some to watch in groups and others alone. This allows the work to meet the viewers in individualized ways simultaneously, without compromising the experience of other audience members. The audience member who likes to actively talk back to the stage with their lights on won’t disrupt the experience of the audience member who seeks silence and darkness when consuming live theatre. And while some in-person theatres offer sensory-friendly performances, ASL, and closed-captioned performances, digital platforms allow these viewing preferences to be offered simultaneously, which diminishes the “othering” effect of specially set aside in-person performance dates.

This accessibility is not only liberating to the viewer, but to the artists’ ecosystem as well. Over the last 18 months, many underrepresented artists were able to mobilize globally to share and develop their stories in immediate ways. With a demand for new work that could speak to the current cultural climate, online platforms not only made this immediacy possible, but responsive, efficient, and sustainable. Without the pipeline of annual season planning, digital platforms revealed how quickly we can gather when no longer limited by highly unsustainable means of travel and lodging. 

We also saw budgets dramatically adapt to the needs of each unique project, as well as sliding ticket sales that opened up dialogue around pay-what-you-can ticket pricing. In this way digital theatre became a speculative model for in-person performances. Organizations were able to experiment with ideas in a venue-decentralized manner, which in turn have inspired new budgeting and pricing structures for in-person performance as it returns. 

Haskell King and Mia Katigbak in ‘Russian Troll Farm.’

As this dialogue evolves, however, some would clearly prefer to shut it down. As theatres have begun to eye a return to in-person, venue-centric theatre-making, many would seek to erase the progress we saw during the pandemic. Indeed, some seem to associate digital innovation with the pandemic itself, and now that the emergency is (almost) behind us, they’re openly relieved to see digital recede.

“Thank goodness it’s over!” they say.

“We can let go of the placeholder!” they say.

“We’re back!” they say.

This perspective is steeped in the comparison, instead of extension, of digital to in-person theatre. What this rhetoric exposes is the way able-bodied, well-off audiences take for granted the option to go to a venue. As we saw in statistics during the pandemic, there is an entire community holding a different comparison: digital theatre vs. no theatre at all. This blind spot has effectively created a Theatre of the Able as our default, on the assumption that everyone has this choice. Closing the proverbial door on digital theatre for those unable to attend in-person events shuts out an entire artistic ecosystem that we have glimpsed over the past 18 months, and may never encounter again without further investment. This does the opposite of protecting our discipline; it instead freezes an opportunity for contemporary growth.

From our venue-centric vantage point, where we assume in-person theater is theatre for all, we assess digital theatre as “lesser than,” in a way that dangerously erases these communities, artists, and stories for audiences who may experience the digital differently than us. For some, digital is the only means to gather. And yes, I said gather: Digital technology can no doubt appear isolating to some, but it is also unquestionably a shared space for many. Keeping this door open may uncover and share entirely unique perspectives, told in digitally original ways. Joining this potential with the statistics around diverse new audiences, we can see that this is one form of inclusivity and allyship for which we should be fighting.

Clearly this isn’t the catch-all solution, but it helps move the needle into a more equitable position. Digital theatre, it should be said, still struggles with its own inaccessibility issue: broadband and wifi connectivity aren’t universal or free. In September 2020, Vox published a report showing that, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 21 million Americans don’t have access to quality broadband internet. While still a substantial issue, it is not comparable close to the high gates of inaccessibility erected by in-person-only performance. In fact, if the live performance community put its muscle behind the cause of equity in broadband access, they could help an entirely new audience and market form. Vox’s report tracked efforts in cities like Chattanooga, Tenn., where, in 2010, the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, the city-owned utility known as EPB, “began offering ultra-high-speed internet to all of its residents after building out fiber to the city for a smart grid.” As theatre continues its discussion of accessibility, the nationwide conversation about broadband access should be central. As live performance advocates, we could be the powerful voice of change and equity that this movement needs.

Through these efforts, we can connect new audiences and inspire new artists worldwide. These efforts do not need to remain exclusively online, but can become a conduit to new processes and collaborations for in-person hybrid experiences as well. Inviting more voices with diverse perspectives serves the vitality of theatre. Theatre practitioners had been in an artistic rhythm for decades, broken by the last 18 months, which forced a fresh examination of what we all took for granted and assumed was unchangeable. As this wider net of artists join our ecosystem, it will be crucial to welcome them into a neutral gathering forum, uncontaminated by the hierarchical structures of long-standing in-person practices. The only way to make radical change in these structures is by neutralizing the power relationships within assumed processes.

Digital platforms have already shown they can be part of this solution. As disembodied creative ensembles, we witnessed how our disparate environments influenced the ways we communicate, collaborate, and progress. Thrown off balance from our usual way of working, digital theatremaking has demanded authentic patience, empowered every participant to hold space in their own ways, and allowed for a democratization in creative problem-solving without a hierarchical power structure. Working in digital required us to ask each participant about their individual experience; it required us to literally meet each of us in our intimate living quarters and truly listen to everyone’s needs. These needs and requirements are no less relevant for in-person theatre, but working in a digitally disembodied way taught us to communicate less hierarchically, and to be more honest with our experiences, since there were no other participants experiencing the work from our unique location. These conversations led us to realize something we should have always had in mind, including for in-person performance: that everyone experiences the world uniquely.

The future of theatre is at a fraught intersection as we prepare for reentry. We have the choice to move forward or to go back. This is a plea for us to join forces and embrace the remarkable progress digital theatre has made in dismantling hierarchical assumptions, able-bodied biases, and the racism and classism that in-person theatre perpetuates by its gatekeeping. Digital theatre is not a symbol of the plague. It is a symbol of the resilience of artists. The past 18 months required us to use our bodies in a disembodied space to engage in risky, innovative, inclusive, democratized experiments. And when we celebrate the work of digital theatremakers, we encourage the theatrical community to hear this as extensionism, not replacement; addition, not subtraction. We can be allies, not rivals.

So as many return to venue-centric performance making, let’s also celebrate and incorporate the necessary strengths of the digital world we unlocked in the last 18 months. Let’s divorce these discoveries from the trauma of the pandemic and expose the strengths we unearthed in the experimental processes we just experienced online. Because these experiences, to many, were also sacred.

Jared Mezzocchi is an Obie-winning multimedia theatre director and designer. He is an associate professor of multimedia and projections at the University of Maryland, and is producing artistic director of Andy’s Summer Playhouse.

A New Vision for Violin Instruction
9/17/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Students learning classical violin usually have to wait until a session with a music teacher to get personalized feedback on their playing. Soon they may have a new tool to use between lessons: an app that can observe them play and guide them toward better posture and form—key elements both for sounding their best and avoiding overuse injuries.

Two University of Maryland researchers are drawing on very different academic backgrounds—one in classical violin and music education, the other in robotics and computer science—to develop this virtual “teacher’s aide” system powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In addition to expanding the market for violin instruction, it will allow students who may not have access to private lessons to receive feedback on their playing.

Associate Professor of Violin in the School of Music Irina Muresanu, who is collaborating with Cornelia Fermüller, associate research scientist in UMD’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, said the technology will be revolutionary for a field rooted in tradition.

“While I believe that traditional methods are still the best way to pass on to our students the legacy and heritage of the classical music world, I am excited to explore ways in which artificial intelligence can be integrated as a feedback mechanism into daily practice—the central experience of any musician’s life,” she said.

The project is part of Arts for All, a new initiative to expand arts programming across campus and bolster interdisciplinary offerings through a fusion of the arts, technology and social justice.

Muresanu and Fermüller were recently awarded a $115,000 Phase I Maryland Innovation Initiative award by the Maryland Technology Development Corporation to support the project. The award, a partnership between the state of Maryland and five of its public universities, is designed to help propel research ideas from the lab to the commercial market.

An internationally renowned Romanian violinist, Muresanu has spent the last decade working at the intersection of music and technology. She previously collaborated with Amitabh Varshney, dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, on “Four Strings Around the Virtual World,” which embedded Muresanu’s solo violin project in famous global locales including concert halls, cathedrals and outdoor spaces.

When the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person teaching impossible, Muresanu began seeking new ways to allow violin students to continue learning remotely. Last year, she partnered with UM Ventures, a joint technology commercialization initiative of the University of Maryland, Baltimore and University of Maryland, College Park, to explore high-tech approaches for enhancing remote lessons.

Fermüller was a natural fit for the project. A researcher of computer vision and robotics, she works to enable computers to understand and enhance what people are doing in their daily activities.

In the Autonomy Robotics Cognition Lab, Muresanu and Fermüller, along with computer science Ph.D. student Snehesh Shrestha, are studying human-robot interaction in the context of playing the violin and how to integrate AI into the learning process. The technology they are producing—which will enable computers and phones to derive information from digital video—will let music teachers customize the type and amount of feedback students receive and survey the results.

Fermüller said the technology will be a major step forward in using AI for music education, and could potentially be applied to other instruments.

“The platform we are currently working on provides feedback to students based on their specific needs, and this is very novel,” she said. “I believe this is the future of AI-supported education.”

Arts for All Launches With Expanded NextNOW Fest
9/13/21

University President Darryll J. Pines sent the following email to the campus community this morning:

Today, we officially launch Arts for All, a campuswide initiative that seeks to humanize the world’s grand challenges and integrate the arts more fully into conversation with the sciences and technology, enriching all.

There is transformational power at the intersection of the arts and the sciences. Solutions to some of today’s most pressing challenges—structural racism, gender inequality, climate change, global health disparities and others—need the arts and humanities to help us understand the historical, cultural, linguistic and artistic expressions that shape our world and to discover people-centered solutions.

Arts for All will create new curriculum, including the new undergraduate program in Immersive Media and Design co-developed by the Department of Art and the Department of Computer Science that debuted this semester, and the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance will prepare students for emerging fields in webcasts and virtual reality performance. These exciting new initiatives will inspire artistic and technological makers to investigate and create new connections that activate social change.

In the spirit of bringing art and culture to a wider audience, an expanded NextNOW Fest, presented by The Clarice, launches today. Throughout the week, NextNOW Fest events will occur in venues across campus as well as in College Park. Under the theme of “Where Creativity and Community Converge,” dozens of free events will celebrate imagination and creative expression.

I would like to invite every member of our campus community to be a full participant in this expanded arts programming. At the heart of the Arts for All initiative lies a deep commitment to providing interdisciplinary opportunities to make connections in and out of the classroom that empower all of us to address complex problems in new and meaningful ways.

Some highlights from NextNOW Fest 2021 and future Arts for All programming include:

  • Immersive Media Design Showcase (Sept. 16-17; Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering): Students in the new Immersive Media Design major showcase projects that push the boundaries of reality and break barriers in the arts.
  • NextNOW Fest at The Hall CP (Sept. 19, The Hall CP): A day-long celebration of the arts featuring workshops, interactive installations and live performance from campus and community artists and arts organizations.
  • American Landscapes (Sept. 9-Nov. 19; David C. Driskell Center): A new exhibition that highlights overlooked Black artists in American artistic tradition. In conjunction with this exhibition, a symposium will be presented on Oct. 28, with opportunities to attend in person and virtually.
  • Arts and Humanities Dean’s Lecture Featuring Vijay Gupta (Oct. 21): The College of Arts and Humanities presents violin prodigy and social justice advocate Vijay Gupta, who in 2007 became the youngest violinist ever to join the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and has emerged as a leading voice for the role of music to heal, inspire, provoke change and foster social connection.
  • Hookman (Nov. 13-21): Lauren Yee's Hookman tells the story of Lexi, a college freshman who is haunted by the sudden death of her childhood best friend—all while navigating the pressures of being a young woman entering adulthood. Directed by Nathaniel P. Claridad ’04, the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies' production brings the horror film genre to the stage, inviting audiences to explore themes of grief, trauma and guilt in an up close and personal way. This is the inaugural production of the Maya Brin Institute for New Performance.

Our world needs artists whose work helps us address grand challenges and explore the complexities of the human experience. Together, let’s celebrate the power of creativity—music, theater, dance, visual arts, design, creative writing—to improve the lives of all humankind.

Sincerely,

President Darryll Pines Signature

Darryll J. Pines
President, University of Maryland
He/Him/His

 

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