Interrupting the Machine: Theatre as a Site of Dis-Automation in the Age of AI

Saul Kemack

doi:10.5771/9783689005245

Summary

Saul Kemack draws on the theories of Bernard Stiegler and Kati Röttger to examine live performance as a site for practicing “dis-automation dramaturgy.” Through a detailed phenomenological and intermedial study of Forced Entertainment’s
Signal to Noise, the author explores how theatrical framing can expose the logics of digitally saturated life under hyper-industrial capitalism. Rather than claiming we can wholly resist such logics, his research reveals how art creates temporary interruptions – moments of reflection and reoriented sensibility – in the algorithmic flow. Saul Kemack is a writer, researcher, and dramaturg based in South Africa.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2025
ISBN-Print: 978-3-68900-523-8
ISBN-Online: 978-3-68900-524-5
Publisher: Tectum, Baden-Baden
Series: AGent. New Theses in Performance Research
Volume: 13
Language: English
Pages: 82
Product type: Book Titles

1. Foreword No access
2. Acknowledgements No access
3. Maybe No access
4. Preface No access
1. The Age of AI No access
2. Dis-Automation No access
3. Departing from Projects that Strictly Employ AI and Algorithms No access
4. Should We Really Be Afraid? No access
5. New Tech, Same Old Anxiety No access
6. Access and Excess in the Digital Maze: Can Art Help Us Navigate? No access
7. From Late Capitalism to the Hyper-Industrial No access
8. Imaginaries of AI: From Fiction to Pharmakon No access
9. Central Question: Dis-Automation in Theatre Practice No access
1. Introduction to Theoretical Framework No access
2. Artificial Intelligence and Automated Digital Technologies No access
3. Contextualising the Hyper-industrial and Digital Anxieties No access
4. Sociotechnical Imaginaries (SIs) No access
5. Technics, Tekhnē, and the Pharmakon No access
1. Phenomenology No access
2. Intermediality: The Method is in the Media No access
1. A Reminder No access
2. Context No access
3. Description No access
4. 1. Title Framing No access
  2. The Middle of the Vortex (Intermedial Destabilisation) No access
Conclusion No access Pages 71 - 76
References No access Pages 77 - 82