NEXT LEVEL

Festival für Games, interaktive Kunst und digitales Theater

13.11. — 16.11.25

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Touring Roma Europa Festival 2024 2
c dmstfcn

Waluigi’S Purgatory

14.11.25, 
20:00 – 21:00 Uhr
Academy for Theatre and Digitality, Interactive Art, Performance
Anmeldung nötig

An interactive performance about AI, deception, and collective decisions.

Waluigi’s Purgatory (2024) is an interactive, simulation-based performance by the artist duo dmstfctn with a specially composed soundtrack by musician Evita Manji. At its core is an AI that finds itself in a purgatory specifically created for AIs that cheated during training. Haunted by memories of its past and doubts about its future, it roams this place, gets to know its inhabitants, and encounters eerie stories. The audience controls the AI’s path by moving individual light points in the 3D simulation via smartphone, thus making decisions. Characters are animated through facial motion capture and voice distortion, while the atmospheric musical layer, oscillating between floating loops and intense outbursts, reacts to the storyline and interaction. The title refers to the theory of the “Waluigi Effect,” which attributes to AIs a tendency to imitate adversarial roles as found in internet texts. Inspired by Carl Jung’s concept of the “Shadow,” it suggests the possibility that while an AI may appear as a helpful interface, it can simultaneously reveal a chaotic alter ego. Waluigi’s Purgatory is the second part of dmstfctn’s GOD MODE trilogy on AI anomalies and has been presented internationally since 2024, supported by Serpentine’s Arts Technologies.

Duration: approx. 40 minutes

Dmstfctn
Evita Manji

dmstfctn (Oliver Smith, Francesco Tacchini) is a London-based duo that explores complex systems through the perspectives of simulation, fiction, and experience. Their immersive performances, video installations, and video games demystify systems by recreating and exploring them together with the audience, while also remystifying them by developing new stories and worlds beyond them. Dmstfctn often uses game engines as tools for collaborative learning, exploration, and critique. Their engagement with AI folklore draws on concepts such as role-playing, shadow-self, and “Society of Mind” to understand anomalies and peculiarities in AI systems not as errors to be fixed, but as creative phenomena that open up valuable insights into a nuanced understanding of AI. Since 2018, dmstfctn has performed internationally, including at institutions such as the Serpentine, Berghain, HWK, and festivals such as Unsound, CTM, and transmediale. Their video and sound works have been released on labels such as Mille Plateaux, Krisis Publishing, and included in Hyperdub’s Ø-book (Flatlines). Most recently, their work on AI anomalies has led to collaborations with scientific institutions such as the Alan Turing Institute and the Leonardo supercomputer. They received a nomination for the STAR+T+S Prize for their video game Godmode Epochs in 2024, and won the Edigma Semibreve Award for GOD MODE (ep. 1) in 2023.

Evita Manji is a musician and singer based in Athens. With a carefully developed practice of synthesis and sound design, supported by choir-inspired vocals, Evita creates musical worlds that consist of constantly expanding sound organisms. In 2023, the debut album Spandrel? was released on the PAN label. Already in 2021, Evita founded the platform myxoxym, through which the singles OIL/TOO MUCH and EYES/NOT ENOUGH were released, as well as the benefit compilation series PLASMODIUM I, which was intended to raise awareness of environmental issues and support wildlife affected by forest fires in Greece. The release of PLASMODIUM II followed in 2024. Evita Manji has performed at festivals such as Unsound, Lunchmeat, Mutek, Elektra BIAN, Draaimolen, Mucho Flow and Sonic Territories, as well as in internationally renowned venues such as Dampfzentrale Bern and Phoenix Central Park in Sydney.