Hiroshi Ishigoro, credit: Tsukasa Aoki

Sayonara, credit: Tatsuo Nambu / Aichi Triennale 2010

Exactly this level of interaction makes up the narratical and philosophical tension of the amazing android-theatre Sayonara, which has been written for two actors by Ishiguro together with Oriza Hirata (JP), one of them being human, the other one an android. It is not told who is who, a puzzle to be solved by the audience. A great good-bye is in the center of Sayonara: The master who feels his death coming listens to poems about journeys and good-byes, read by his student. The play is about 20 minutes long and is in Japanese, English and German.

At this point, a lot of people are going to say: “Hey, wait a minute! Of course we know who we are. After all, we can cut ourselves open and show that we bleed.” So what. What if we’re a bleeding machine?

And what about the soul? Maybe that’s what could be called a command center. Maybe we can swap bodies, tap into another life?

Dismissing questions like this as absurd is relatively simple, so let’s put this in more concrete terms. For quite some time now, Ishiguro has been tinkering with robots, with humanoids, with androids. He’s gone so far that he’s now recreated himself as a robot, and the similarities are astonishing. Now, image the following: You can control this robot; you hear what it hears and see what it sees; it speaks with your voice and with your facial expressions (you’re being filmed and your expressions are applied to the robot’s face). So, what’s your body now? Which body interacts with its surroundings?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-tTS7Ze85o
Hiroshi Ishiguro presents the Geminoid IH-1 at the Ars Electronica and talks about his ideas

Or imagine that a person you’re very close to is controlling this robot, and you’re having a conversation with this person. She’s unmistakably saying what she always says, and she also somehow looks like she does, she sounds exactly the same, but it’s just not her. Or is it? How would you react if, all of a sudden, she kissed somebody else?

A play is being performed in the New Cathedral, it was written by Ishiguro and Oriza Hirata. The cast is an actress and an android. The audience isn’t told which is which—to avoid spoiling the suspense. Boundaries begin to blur. We’re approaching Ishiguro’s objective—namely, humanizing robots, interacting with them as if they were just like us. And perhaps we’ll soon no longer have to put receptionists through the ordeal of working tedious night shifts.

This play also raises fascinating questions, ones that urge theatergoers to subject their own perceptions to a bit of suspicious scrutiny. Those who dare to do so should definitely not miss this spectacle.