Abstract

Starting from the recognition that theater has, since its beginning, served both as a laboratory for and a space of reflection on social and technological developments, this paper contends that performance can provide valuable perspectives, models, and practical approaches for contemporary technology research. By adopting a performative gaze and understanding as well as staging technologies like AI not as neutral tools or static devices, but as eventful, embodied, and collective practices, their inner workings, hidden infrastructures, social implications, and political dimensions can be rendered visible and negotiable in new and fruitful ways. This particular potential of performative approaches is exemplified through selected case studies from New Practice in Art and Technology, in which carefully staged exchanges among humans, algorithms, and robotic agents challenge commonly held assumptions and open up spaces for collective discourse and critical reflection on AI.