Virtual reality theater and an artificial intelligence that writes plays: In February, the Schubert Theater in Vienna is showing a symbiosis of technology and art.
There is no other country like this in the whole world,” says Pinocchio on the stage, while tinny music sounds from the speakers. “Every street is merry. There is a spectacle and a roar that makes you want to plug your ears.”
It was not a human, but a machine that wrote these sentences: the artificial intelligence GPT-2, a deep learning program, created most of the text for the piece “Project Pinocchio”. Puppeteer Manuela Linshalm opened the show on Thursday with a short scene from the play press conference to the Future Lab of the Schubert Theater. In 2019, the “Pinocchio Project” celebrated its premiere there, now the puppet theater wants to expand its digital focus and founded the Schubert-Theater-Digital-Track.