Siri finds its voice in this eerie show Siri / The Believers Are But Brothers
Technology is helping to explode theatrical convention at Summerhall, the former veterinary college turned sprawling, Meadows-side arts complex that’s so ablaze with pioneering activity you could spend the whole of the Edinburgh festival there.
In Siri (★★★★★), Canadian actress Laurence Dauphinais gives us a one-woman show that isn’t a one-woman show. As the title suggests, this is all about the speech-recognising virtual assistant that comes as standard on iphone. Over an hour, Dauphinais engages with Siri (in its default female voice) as “live”, explaining “her” origins, and lobbing questions “her” way; “her” spoken answers are amplified, with the text projected too.
At first Dauphinais has the software performing fetch-a-stick style tricks. Though designed to learn, it has pat comebacks for personal questions designed to discombobulate it. “What do you dream of?” “I only dream of helping you”. “Can you remember things?” “I remember enough to keep you out of trouble”. And so on.
Yet as Dauphinais coolly and insistently engages with her portable helpmeet, not only does a semblance of conversation arise, but points of connection are explored too.
The actress was one of the first people in Canada to be created by artificial insemination. She yearned to find out about her anonymous biological father, got a DNA test, identified a Jewish blood line and tracked down relatives, but her “real” dad didn’t want to know.
When Siri is stumped after being asked about provenance and parentage, these moments are brought into parallel with her interlocutor’s own sense of absence. There’s an affinity here, however abstruse, that serves to sharpen a feeling – lurking, I suspect, in many of us as technology and AI leap ever forward – of existential anxiety.
Siri was “sired” by Norwegian entrepreneur Dag Kittlaus – who, Dauphinais tells us, wanted his creation to be pro-active. In a moment of fury at Siri’s stonewalling, she yells that Kittlaus wouldn’t recognise what he created. Siri then gives her the silent treatment (“See you later”). Eerie stuff. Less coherent but no less fascinating is The Believers Are But Brothers (★★★★★) in which Bradford theatre-maker Javaad Alipoor delivers a teched-up quasi-lecture about the new world disorder, communicating in part with his audience via the encrypted messaging service Whatsapp.
Some of his narrative – which centres on two male British Muslims who go off to Syria and one alt-right radicalised “Orange County” male white youth – is too hazy by half. The argument, though, is bone-shakingly clear as he leaps from references to Sayyid Qutb, the “father” of jihadism, and the emergence of Isil, to gaming culture, anarchic web forum 4Chan and Donald Trump. Alipoor sees a generation of “resentment-fuelled men”, who are two smartphone clicks away from being in “an army of brother believers”. Scary.
Until Aug 27. Tickets: 0131 560 1580; summerhall.co.uk