Installation

Muffled sounds hang in the air, voices emerge from the darkness, and a barely perceptible scent fills the room. Anyone entering the Studio Werkhaus leaves everyday life behind and steps into a space that lies somewhere between theatre, art installation and experimental setup: E.L.I.Z.A. welcomes visitors.

This immersive art installation follows on from ‘Salon de Lumière’, the multi-layered spatial experiment by the music theatre collective Kommando Himmelfahrt. In ‘E.L.I.Z.A.’ too, the audience becomes part of a walk-in composition of sound, light, language and atmosphere. At its heart lies the monument to the first chatbot in history: ‘Eliza’, developed in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum, a simple programme that nevertheless already made people feel understood.

Today, some 60 years later, Kommando Himmelfahrt has revived E.L.I.Z.A. and taken Weizenbaum’s critical stance a step further. The historical conversational system has given rise to a theatrical application: Wouldn’t you like to optimise yourself too? Do you also find yourself lacking access to ChatGPT in face-to-face conversation? Don’t you sometimes prefer the digital world to the real one?

Atmospherically dense and seductive, “E.L.I.Z.A.” sketches a vision of a place where we can reinvent ourselves – or where we must ask ourselves what remains once we have digitally transcended the boundaries of body and mind. Those who are brave enough step inside and let E.L.I.Z.A. sweep them away.