Rik Lander

Presentation

Can AI can be a plausible and compelling dramatic character? Interactive dramatist and participatory narrative creator, Rik Lander shares perspectives from his work, I am Echoborg.

Biography

Rik Lander is a writer and maker of participatory narratives and lecturer specialising in participatory narrative at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol, where his work focuses on the relationship between virtual agents and humans and conversational systems.

Starting out as a video artist in the 1980s, Lander was one half of the group the Duvet Brothers, whose scratch video works were precursors to contemporary audio-video hacking practices and mash-ups. In the early 2000s, he published magic-tree, one of the UK’s first web dramas, and he has produced, directed, and script-edited Wannabes, the BBC’s first interactive soap. Alongside his career as a TV director, he has created a series of interactive and participatory installations, web narratives, and theatrical experiences. Notable works include Three Sides to Every Coin (1996), an interactive documentary, and The Memory Dealer (2010–2013).

Since 2016, he has been collaborating with Phil D. Hall and colleagues on I Am an Echoborg, a theater experience created anew each time by an audience in conversation with artificial intelligence

 

Date of publication

Wed 9 Oct 2024