Hello Hi There

Hello Hi There uses a famous 1970s television debate between the philosopher Michel Foucault and linguist/activist Noam Chomsky as the inspiration and raw material for a dialogue between two custom-designed “chatbots”: computer programs designed to mimic human conversation. Annie Dorsen worked in residence at EMPAC on the programming for the two chatbots—the only performers in Hello Hi There—enabling them to perform a new, improvised, and as it were, live text every evening.

An Obie-award winning director and writer, Annie Dorsen works in a variety of fields, including theater, film, dance, and as of 2010, digital performance. She is the co-creator of the 2008 Broadway musical Passing Strange, which she also directed.