Can Humans Dream of Utopian Futures? Part II
Can Humans Dream of Utopian Futures? Part II is an experimental live performance combining spoken word, sound, coding, generative AI, and audience participation to explore creativity, agency, and human–machine futures.
Building on Utopian Futures Part I, first presented at Nottingham Central Library in February 2025, this new iteration expands the project into a large-scale collaborative AI “jam” involving artists, technologists, performers, researchers, and audiences.
Throughout the evening, audience members will be invited to respond to a series of prompts exploring communication, fear, hope, and speculative futures. These responses will become live material for the performers, who will remix, interpret, disrupt, or reject them using a mixture of AI systems, live visuals, analogue processes, sound, and spoken word.
Nothing is fully scripted, pre-rendered, or predictable. The event deliberately embraces experimentation and uncertainty, using AI both as a creative medium and as a subject of critique. Some outputs may be generated by machines, others entirely by humans, and many will emerge somewhere in between.
Part performance, part live research environment, the project explores the future of human–machine collaboration and asks how artists, audiences, and AI systems might collectively shape emerging forms of creativity, participation, and authorship. At its core, the work functions as an exercise in participatory speculative thinking — inviting audiences to collectively imagine, question, and negotiate possible futures in real time.
Supported by the Nottingham School of Art & Design Practice Fund, and CDI Collective.
Access
Find information about getting here and our building access and facilities here.
This event will be held in The Space.
This event is wheelchair accessible.
If you have any questions around access or have specific access requirements we can accommodate, please get in touch with us by emailing info@nottinghamcontemporary.org or phoning 0115 948 9750.
Please note: this event uses live generative AI systems and improvisational performance methods. While the work is actively moderated and the event organisers do not anticipate inappropriate content, outputs are generated in real time and cannot be fully predicted or pre-screened in advance.