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| The Harmnf
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| Chekhov meets ChatGPT in a live VR lecture gone wrong. |
| Caveat, 21 A Clinton St |
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Nov 30 (Sun) , 2025 @ 02:30 PM
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$20 |
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/-73.984375,40.72066116,13,0,0/550x200?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoiZ2FyeXNndWlkZSIsImEiOiJjamtobmRiYmgwb3gwM3F1a2o2Mmd0YWw3In0.DinA62CR3-OKtf3axa5O7Q)
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| DETAILS |
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Chekhov meets ChatGPT in a live VR lecture gone wrong. One man. One headset. Zero control.
Short: Chekhov's The Harmfulness of Tobacco gets rebooted for the algorithm age: one man, one VR headset, & a lecture that won't stay on topic.
Long: When theater director & mixed-reality artist Kevin (as a robot) Laibson set out to create a fully AI-generated adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Harmfulness of Tobacco, everything went wrong. The synthetic actors couldn't act, the generated designs were awful, & eventually his language model refused to write in English, insisting Russian was superior. So instead, Laibson turned the failure itself into the performance.
In The Harmnf, he attempts to deliver a lecture on that failed experiment-just as Chekhov's hapless lecturer once tried (and failed) to give a talk on tobacco. What unfolds is part confession, part comedy, & part philosophical meltdown: a live show presented as a talk that keeps derailing into questions about creativity, collaboration, & the inevitability of humanity's continued monopoly on art, despite the technocratic set's best efforts. Performed with slides, a "trusty" laptop, & a VR headset connecting to a simultaneous virtual audience, The Harmnf is equal parts stand-up, academic farce, & existential tech demo.
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