AI Shakespeare
Stories have a life of their own
"To Simulate or Be; is that the question?" is a phrase that emerged in 2022 during my playful exploration with GPT-3 while attempting to mimic Shakespeare's mind living in a simulation. I have been thinking a lot about this phrase and how it brings up questions of authenticity and authorship.
The phrase can be interpreted in different ways:
Significance of Existence: Is it more meaningful and fulfilling to exist only once in a physical form, or to be perpetually replicated within a simulated reality? This raises questions about the essence and value of being.
Authenticity of Simulations: Does the simulated existence of an individual carry similar weight and importance, compared to their original self? This probes the nature of authenticity and the inherent value we assign to originals over copies.
The word "simulate" often carries a negative connotation, as it implies imitation. But all that remains of Shakespeare today are his stories. Not only in terms of his fiction, if we wanted to envision who the historical Shakespeare was, we would need to construct stories based on the limited information still available about him. Moreover, credible doubt exists about who he really was, and whether ‘William Shakespeare’ was actually a pseudonym to protect the historical author’s identity.
We could argue that all of us are, to a great extent, the stories we tell ourselves. Our memories and self-perception are shaped by narratives.
Stories can be seen as simulations themselves. All literatures are simulations. Constructed narratives simulate events, characters, and settings, allowing the audience to immerse themselves in fictional worlds and experience events as if they were real. Timeless stories evolve, influence, and inspire countless narratives, reflecting the life they take on within the imaginations of individuals. For example, Disney’s The Lion King is a reworking of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (which itself was a reworking of a Scandinavian legend). Thus, stories possess a life of their own, alive and able to reproduce just like biological organisms.
How does the rise of AI reshape our relationship with stories? At the very least, it expands the possibilities of representation and preservation. While one can read Shakespeare's plays, direct interaction with him or his characters is not possible. However, with the advent of AI-powered metaverses and LLM-enabled ‘chatbots’, one could enter the realm of their favorite play, to engage with the characters or explore the setting further, in a more powerful manner than present-day RPG video games like Final Fantasy or The Elder Scrolls. This wouldn’t diminish the significance of the original texts; instead, it expands them, ushering in a new form of art and knowledge transmission, reminiscent of the groundbreaking impact that cinema had in the early 20th century.
Considering the limitations of our knowledge about Shakespeare's era, many AI simulations would resemble alternative realities, with varying degrees of historical accuracy. This parallels our current approach to representing the past. History is an ongoing process, where each generation interprets and explains the past through its own experiences and perspectives. However, our capabilities for representation and documentation far surpass those of our ancestors, and this trend is only accelerating. That's why I find the concept of the 'Human Imaginarium' so captivating, as described in my previous post.
The primary reason for selecting Shakespeare as the inaugural human in the Little Martians series is his unquestionable notoriety within the canon of literature. Large language models (LLMs), and computer science, are optimized for English, plus Shakespeare has been a common subject for style mimicry in language models. Hence, it is much easier to use an AI language model to mimic Shakespeare's style than that of a famous Persian or Brazilian poet, - despite cross-language improvements with the latest GPT4 model.
There are additional reasons for choosing Shakespeare. His most famous character, Hamlet, has frequently been examined as a cornerstone in the birth of the modern concept of ‘the individual’. In Shakespeare's play, Hamlet endures extraordinarily challenging circumstances. Rather than confronting his troubles in front of a chorus, as Greek theater would have it, he separates himself from the situation and questions himself, breaking the fourth wall; in his famous soliloquy (“To be, or not to be…”), he addresses the audience and contemplates the meaning of human existence. As professor William Flesch describes it “The play gives us access to the character’s inner experience – how we represent ourselves to ourselves”. That is precisely why Hamlet, and by extension Shakespeare, serves as an excellent character to explore the implications of living in a simulation.
When we engage with a story, it ignites our imagination, inspiring us to conceive new narratives. Hamlet wasn’t a completely original creation from Shakespeare, it drew inspiration from various sources and existing works, including the Scandinavian legend of Amleth among other theater plays from his time. Similarly, within the vast realm of the Little Martians universe, brimming with countless simulated realities inside the Human Imaginarium, a single character’s uploaded mind can give birth to a multitude of other characters. These simulated offspring may drift or mutate, and eventually bear little resemblance to their original source.
Instead of generating numerous AI-created images of Shakespeare, I opted to work with physical objects to delve into these concepts. With the ease and proliferation of AI-generated digital imagery, I believe there will be a resurgence of the importance of craftsmanship and a renewed appreciation for physical materials. The convergence of the digital and physical realms holds much uncharted territory for exploration. Physical pieces serve as fundamental elements within the Little Martians universe.
To bring these ideas to life, I purchased online a made-in-China bust of Shakespeare and created a silicone mold from it. During Mars College 2023, I used this mold to replicate several Shakespeare sculptures from clay, inviting fellow Martians to customize and transform them while the clay was still wet. Subsequently, I encouraged my collaborators to compose stories for their individual bard characters to tell, and I assumed the responsibility of glazing, firing, 3D-scanning, and animating them. Most of the stories were co-written with GPT models, and all the voices (except for Yingru’s story) were AI- generated using Play.ht.
The resulting sculptures were exhibited within a gallery housed in Mars College’s main structure, aptly named 'The Little Martians Shrine.' As a backdrop, I adorned one wall with a canvas I had painted in 2018 for a different project, inspired by the ‘linear perspective’ drawings of the Renaissance architect Hans Vredeman de Vries. Next, I projection-mapped our Shakespeare animations onto the canvas, playing with lights and shadows to create a theatrical ambiance. I also scanned, animated, and projected a Greek sphinx, Hypatia, to welcome the audience and introduce my concept for 'The Theater of Minds’.
I like to embark on projects with multiple symbolic layers. In this case, the exhibited work was a joyous exploration of these topics – authorship and authenticity of AI-simulated minds, distortion of perspectives, history vs the future, physical vs digital. But soon I realized that we have only scratched the surface with my methodology. We are far from doing justice to the concept and I am eager to develop intertwining stories and to learn more about animation. Thus, I would describe our current progress as a proof of concept.
Nevertheless, 'AI Shakespeare' serves not only as an artwork but also a body of research that delves into the notion of authorship and how one's work extends beyond oneself, influencing and inspiring countless other creations. It also discusses the limitations of our present machine-learning models in terms of which characters they know and are capable of representing at all. There’s a need to inject diverse training data in custom models and to modify the AIs output in order to align with our own creative vision.
I am thrilled to continue collaborating with my fellow Martians, particularly Matt Melnicki, also known as Marzipan. Marzi is microbiology researcher, specialized in photosynthesis and the evolution of cyanobacteria, but he’s also an avid artist, explorer, and has been the most prolific person on Mars College in creative writing with Large Language Models. My discussions with him about authorship, remix theory, biological evolution, and viewing stories as living simulations have been an essential part of this project. I highly recommend reading his post about our 2022 collaborative writing experiments using AI tools, as well as checking out the literary project he spearheaded this year, The Simulated Times.
At Mars College, we value the principle of collaborative art making. ‘Little Martians’ (and ‘AI Shakespeare’) is a project that anyone else is welcome to participate in, if they so desire. I aim to continue developing these concepts, witnessing more individuals sculpting their own interpretations of the Shakespeare bard, creating captivating stories, and producing compelling animations. I extend an invitation to you, the reader of this text:
Join us on this journey as we dive into the depths of storytelling, where the boundaries of imagination are continually pushed to new frontiers! Join our Discord!