Role play with AI w. dmstfctn

​dmstfctn will walk through a selection of work from the last five years of their practice, exploring narratives around artificial intelligence through performances, installations, and myth creation. They'll draw threads between the works, looking at gameplay and game engines, the recurring motif of the stage, and theatrical traditions, techniques, and characters.

​Works Featured

​In Grokh Tung Tung (2025) — Two AIs tell each other jokes about cheating machines. They speak in an imitational language inspired by 16th-century Grammelot, composed entirely of the mistaken outputs of a text-to-speech AI model.

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​The Models (2025) — An infinite, interactive theatre simulator with dialogues generated by AI. Produced with the Leonardo Supercomputer, the simulation lets audiences stage short sketches with a cast of six Commedia dell'Arte masks impersonated by AI models and a set of controversial theatrical props, exploring the improvisational, nonsensical, and hallucinatory nature of generative AI.

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​God Mode (ep. 1) (2022) — The first episode in dmstfctn's ongoing GOD MODE trilogy of real-time artworks about AI anomalies. An interactive performance staging the story of a frustrated AI training in a simulated supermarket, until it finds a bug to cheat its way out.

​Waluigi's Purgatory (2024) — The second episode in the GOD MODE trilogy. An interactive performance staging the story of an AI stuck in a purgatory for cheating AIs, set in a simulated theatre.

​Godmode Epochs (2023) — A multiplayer AI training clicker game set in an infinite supermarket, where time is running out and the AI is frustrated.

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​About dmstfctn

​dmstfctn (Oliver Smith, Francesco Tacchini) is a London-based artist duo exploring complex systems through simulation, fiction, and experience. Their immersive performances, video installations and video games demystify systems by replicating and exploring them together with audiences, and ‘remystify’ them by building new stories and worlds atop them.

​Since 2018, they have performed and exhibited internationally at institutions including Serpentine, Berghain, HWK, ICA, HEK, LUMA, SOLO Contemporary, and at festivals such as Unsound, transmediale, and CTM. Their work around AI specifically saw them collaborate with scientific institutions such as The Alan Turing Institute and the Leonardo Supercomputer.

About Rhizome
Rhizome champions internet art and culture through commissions, exhibition, and digital preservation, online at rhizome.org and in partnership with its longtime affiliate and host, the New Museum in New York City.

​Founded in 1996 by artist Mark Tribe as an intimate email list connecting some of the first artists to work on the web and now—more than twenty years later—a thriving nonprofit with robust, multi-tiered programming, Rhizome has played an integral role in the history, definition, and growth of art engaged with the internet.

​About Artwrld

​Artwrld is a social discovery app that makes the art world more welcoming, accessible and easier to explore. Now live in NYC and LA. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ More at: artwrld.com