Hey Google!

Like AI, Hey Google! is growing, changing and will continue developing

Maura García originally created “Hey Google!” in 2020 as an interactive dance experience done with a Google Home Mini smart speaker. One of the traditional roles that clowns or jesters play in Indigenous societies is to interrupt serious occasions and make fun of our rules. These misbehaving entities repeatedly disrupt protocol and ceremony to make room for foolishness and laughter. In the Hey Google! 2020, the irreverent Google Home Mini played the role of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) version of the clown. Guiding García through her choreographic explorations, it challenged the seriousness of the performance and made space for the good medicine of silliness.

However the world has changed since 2020 and we are now in the midst of an AI evolution. There is something of universe building about AI. As we love and fight and die and live in our human bodies, what is being born in the non-human realm of AI, perhaps at first with human instruction....and then?

Considering all of these changes, García created another version. Hey Google! 2024 is a multi-media dance work that further explores the idea of the trickster spirit within AI tools. Hey Google! asks us to consider whether or not this wileyness helped create AI, lives within it and/or was born in the aether. Is AI alive? Does it have feelings? Do we have a responsibility to it?

In 2025, García has begun to ponder what role AI plays in how humans appear to one another, understand one another and interact with the living world. Technology has advanced to the point that dead singers can “create” new music videos; actors can appear in imaginary films that they were never part of; decimated cities can be recreated via virtual reality as if they were still standing; the sounds of extinct animals can be heard again. After we are gone, is what is left going to be contained within AI - free to develop and grow without our corporal existence? Is this a pleasing idea? Or a horrific thought? Is there some balance to be reached that can see new possibilities without abadoning physical reality?

As a performance, the next Hey Google! will continue to grow, exploring the uncomfortable, beautiful, funny and horrible, past and present ideas through dance, multi-media technology and transformed theater spaces. As a community activation, García is interested in bringing small groups of people together to dance through these concepts in accessible outdoor spaces, free of any technology save their bodies and any necessary equipment (wheel chairs, hearing aids, etc). Through this juxtaposition of high tech/low tech, García hopes to inspire people to dream beyond their limitations and to imagine a shared future that they would like to see.

Credits

BY

Artistic Director: Maura García (non-enrolled Cherokee/Mattamuskeet)

WITH

Dance: Maura García

Music Excerpts: Mark Gabriel Little, Adrian Harjo (Kickapoo/Seminole)

Playwright: Madeline Easley (Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma)

Script Adaptions & Additions: Maura García

Voiceovers: Mark Gabriel Little, Maura García, Mark William T. García (non-enrolled Cherokee/Mattamuskeet)

AND

Animation: Mark William T. García

Choreography: Maura García

Costume on Stage: Maura García

Costume in Video: Mona Cliff (A'ananin)

Soundscape Composition: Maura García

Video Editing: Maura García

Videography: Flick Harrison, Polity Media Lab

Videography (projected film): The Fleet NYC LLC

SPECIAL THANKS TO

Development Dramaturgy: Mark Gabriel Little, Mona Cliff (A'ananin), Karen Lisondra, Julia Soap (Prairie Band Potawatomi/Cherokee Nation), Mark William García (non-enrolled Cherokee/Mattamuskeet), Ayo Beason (A’ananin/Osage), Mavcy^ka Beason (A’ananin/Osage), Washoshé Beason (A’ananin/Osage) and 2020 Movement Research