This book offers a comprehensive analysis of current applications of generative artificial intelligence in performances and installations, examining the relationships between creative process, programming environments and staging. The discussion focuses on software agency, which entails distinctive creative and relational possibilities. The chapters are organised around three concepts drawn from computer science – the black box, the white box and the grey box – which are reframed as theoretical models. The black box designates a particular kind of authorship, in which the staging expresses the creative dialogue between the author and generative AI. The white box, by contrast, decentres the author, positioning the audience and the machine as co-constitutive members of a hybrid community that jointly defines the artwork. The grey box synthesises the two into an empirical model, positing that artworks can be situated along a continuum from passive observation to open-ended relationship.

Luca Befera is a Research Fellow at the University of Turin, Italy. His research currently focuses on multimedia art, digital performance, and artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on the aesthetic, ethical, and ecological implications of generative software in the arts.