Extract from ABC News
Adam Kelly says he uses dragons to understand human behaviour, and now dives into the ethics of creative AI through the mythical beasts. (Supplied: Perth Festival)
Adam Kelly really loves dragons.
For the self-described "autistic gentleman and performer", they've helped him make sense of the world ever since he first saw the dragon in Shrek as child.
"I use dragons to help me understand human behaviour and why humans do some of the hilariously insane things we do to each other," he says.
"I guess the dragons are very supremely useful to me because they can help keep me grounded.
"I don't just make them just to be fantasy stories, but rather more deep meditations of why things happen the way they are."
Over the years Kelly, 29, has created volumes of dragon drawings and stories, but they are not all complete. Could AI help?
That's the idea explored in Kelly's new play, Dragon I.
Developed in collaboration with director James Berlyn, co-performer Jade Del Borrello, and visual artist Ben Hollingsworth, Dragon I explores the idea that while generative AI could help Kelly finish off his books and build his imaginary worlds, if he used AI, the work wouldn't be his.
Dragon I: James Berlyn,director and co-writer (holding dog Ted); performer Jade Del Borello; Adam Kelly performer and co-writer. (ABC News: Emma Wynne)
Enter the Neuro Bureau
The project was kicked off by James Berlyn, who runs his own tiny theatre space in Bayswater, West Berlyn.
"I was the artistic director of WA Youth Theatre Company, which is where I met Adam and Jade. And as they aged out and as I moved on to other things like West Berlyn, I felt like there were still more things to explore," he says.
"Adam and I have co-written the show, I'm directing it, Jade is a script collaborator.
"It's a very collaborative process and it's very exciting to be standing on the beach looking at the tsunami of AI sucking all the water out of the ocean, but it's also terrifying.
"Really the show is a response to that experience."
Adam Kelly and Jade Del Borrello have performed together since their days in youth theatre. (Supplied: Perth Festival)
Initially, Berlyn's idea was to look at the environmental and social impacts of AI, but after working with Kelly, the focus shifted to the impact of AI on creatives, and how it impacts neurodiverse people in particular.
Everyone involved in Dragon I is neurodiverse, a loose collective they call the Neuro Bureau.
One of the things that concern them is that not only are large language models built on the creative work of others, but that this doesn't include many neurodiverse perspectives.
"Because AI just largely copies the majority view on a lot of things," Kelly says.
"AI was made up with, quite built on, very ableist ideas. And I suspect while things are starting to move in the right direction, I think there's a lot of that's very entrenched."
AI 'often banal'
For Del Borrello, who, ironically, plays the AI in the play, the technology has nothing to offer.
"Generative AI is a deceptive so-called tool that has got way out of hand," she says.
"Art was always accessible. It doesn't make anything better. It just promotes a lack of thinking.
"The more we can celebrate the actual creation of whatever experience we are trying to show people, the better."
That instinct was reinforced during the development of the production, when the team initially experimented with using an AI tool on stage in real time.
"It didn't really support Adam as a performer," Berlyn says.
"The results were kind of all over the shop; often banal. And there is the very real concern about the environmental impact of AI."
Audience participation, including drawing dragons, is encouraged in Dragon I. (Supplied: Perth Festival)
The resulting 60-minute show is a mix of lecture, slide-shows and fever dream as Kelly's work is sucked in and changed by the AI in ways he never agrees to.
It's also highly interactive and inclusive, with an Auslan interpreter for each performance and pencil and paper on every seat so that audiences members can draw their own dragon during the show, and donate them to the team at the end if they wish.
To have the show commissioned as part of the Perth Festival program has been a huge thrill.
"Adam and I wrote a script and then we worked that over a period of months and then we did a showing here at West Berlyn for Perth Festival," Berlyn says.
"It turned out that they liked what they saw and a commission developed from there."
After its successful run at Perth Festival, Berlyn and Kelly are hoping the show will have a second life and continue touring, much as Kelly's first solo show, Arco has done.
"I'm feeling really excited," Kelly says.
"I'm anxious but I realise I can use anxiety as energy so I can do it. I'm with an awesome-sauce team.
"Interestingly enough, when I'm in front of an audience, I get so much energy from the audience being there.
"James once jokingly said I'm a director's worst nightmare in that I always perform better when I have an audience around me than in rehearsals."
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