The Delphic Room : An Artistically Derived Metaphor

Summary, in English

In his well-known thought experiment regarding artificial intelligence (AI), John Searle sketched out the philosophic idea of “The Chinese room” – a room in which comprehensible rules (a program) allow a person to perfectly correlate one set of unknown linguistic symbols (a question) with another (an answer) of the same unfamiliar kind. In our creation of an AI-based micro-opera for humans and machines, we have come to reflect upon our concept as an artistic response to Searle’s arguments and a mirroring complement to his debated figure. Our immersive and interactive opera was conceived as a modular series of musically paced meetings between individual visitors and a singing seeress in contact with the digital realm. As an analogy to the Delphic oracle, the seeress delivered AI-prompted answers to the visitors’ questions in real time, framed by poetical, musical, and theatrical structures. In Searle’s Chinese room, goal-oriented computational mechanisms remain detached from understanding during the linguistic operation. In our Delphic room, understanding is key for carrying out the aesthetic operations intended to artistically stimulate a coupling of intellectual and visceral information processing in open-ended and personal ways.

• Author: Hedvig Jalhed; Mattias Rylander; Kristoffer Åberg
• Department/s: Inter Arts Center; Teachers (Malmö Academy of Music)
• Publishing year: 2024-03-19
• Language: English
• Full text: - 362 kB; Download statistics
• Document type: Conference paper: abstract
• Topic: Arts; Philosophy
• Keywords: artistic research; philosophy; experiment; opera; artificial intelligence; interaction; information; Delphic oracle; Searle; Chinese room
• Conference name: AR@K24
• Conference date: 2024-03-18 - 2024-03-19
• Conference place: Oslo, Norway
• Status: Published