a reading room · ongoing
Computer Theater
Live performance made with computers - a reading room and a stage.
The definition, and the four histories
Computer theater is live performance made with computers. The computer can be the set, the projection system, a scene partner, or the thing writing the script.
It has no single origin. Four histories feed into it: theater makers who broke the form open, artists who connected their bodies to networks, directors who brought cameras and screens onstage, and artists who treat the computer screen as the stage.
Invasions
Jun '22 - Apr '24 · San Francisco, Los Angeles, CDMX, Santa Barbara, Ojai
Performance piece exploring scam, intrusion, and intimacy.
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Borderline
Dec '24 - Jan '25 · San Francisco
A full-body multimedia poem about borders, queerness, and the architecture of belonging. Arabic zajal, projected code, and a body on stage negotiating all of it at once.
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I've Always Wanted to Become Everyone
Apr '26 · CultureHub, Los Angeles
Nineteen folders on a dark desktop, projected on two screens. The audience opens them, and a yellow physarum mold grows between whatever they choose to see.
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How to Make a Baby
Jul 25, '26 · tiat, San Francisco
A participatory computer theater performance set in 2036. Prop 43 wants the childfree taxed to fund elder care; a visionary founder arrives with a solution, hidden motives, and a contract for everyone in the room. Nobody watches from outside: the audience argues, votes, signs, and the play ends however the room decides. Premiered at tiat, San Francisco, July 25, 2026; re-performed with Ana María Caballero that August.
open the work pageThe seven parts
Taken apart, most works of computer theater share the same seven parts.
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01
the body
The live performer. Most arguments in the field are about this part. Phelan holds that performance becomes itself by disappearing; Auslander answers that the live was never pure. Stelarc wires his body to the network, Cunningham captures his dancers' motion, and somatic browser pieces use the reader's body as input.
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02
the apparatus
The machinery. Piscator used projectors and treadmills, Brecht left the lights exposed, Svoboda built Laterna Magika, Lepage built the Machine at the Met. Computer theater keeps this habit of showing the rig instead of hiding it.
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03
the screen
The screen arrived in two stages. First it was brought onto the stage: the Wooster Group's monitors, Castorf's backstage cameras, Mitchell's live cinema. Then it became the stage: net.art in the browser, desktop performance, a personal computer shared with an audience.
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04
the code
Dorsen's chatbots rebuild a debate every night, live coders project their screens so the audience can read the code as it is written, and generative text means no two performances are identical. “Algorithms are thoughts,” says the TOPLAP draft.
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05
the network
The network. Ascott theorized it, Galloway and Rabinowitz opened a satellite window between two sidewalks, Sermon put two remote people on the same bed over ISDN, Stelarc let ping traffic twitch his muscles. These works use the network's distance and delay instead of hiding them.
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06
the audience
Brecht wanted radio to be two-way. Blast Theory makes the audience players. In browser pieces, the visitor's input drives the work. Computer theater tends to give the audience something to do.
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07
the archive
Recording and memory have been onstage since Krapp's tape recorder in 1958. The field keeps arguing about what survives a performance: documentation, reconstruction, Phelan's disappearance. Trained models raise the question again, since a model is an archive of the bodies in its training data.
Each name opens its card on the graph. Missing someone? say so.
A manifesto for computer theater
the body will be present.
the body will continue to be present.
the body cannot be removed, even as the digital takes over, even as the mind begins its upload.
the body is the new virus.
the body is the oldest virus.
the body continues to be more dangerous than the screen.
the body is here because the body is what we are.
the body as invasion. the body as contamination.
the body as vessel.
the body as original algorithm.
the body as the most addictive algorithm.
the body as the ultimate provocation of the mirror neuron.
the body as gift and trick, wisdom and fool.
the body as instantiation, high precision.
the making real of dreams and fantasies.
the body as promise. the body as proof of work.
even if the body disappears, the desire for the body will sit in the substrate of every model built after us.
even if the models forget, the body continues as an echo.
the body as ultimate romanticism. the body as ultimate classicism.
the body as end-all, be-all.
the body is here. the body isn't going anywhere.
The graph
Every point in the index below sits on this graph, with the lines between them. Click a point to open its card, or drag it to move it. The buttons re-arrange the same points; the legend switches a lineage on or off.
Work in progress. This graph is incomplete and will keep growing. Missing someone? say so.
Four histories, and everyone in them
Four lineages feed the form. Every point on the graph above is here as text too, tagged by the history it belongs to and ordered by date within each one. Open any of them to read the card.
- 01 breaking the form
- 02 bodies & networks
- 03 screens onstage
- 04 the screen as stage
the origin
01 breaking the form
02 bodies & networks
03 screens onstage
04 the screen as stage
the writings
adjacent
Everything performed, 2014 onward
The full ledger. Open a row for the one-liner and the work page.
I've Always Wanted to Become Everyone Apr '26 Los Angeles 2026
Interactive theatre piece premiered at CultureHub LA.
open the work pageI've Always Wanted to Become Everyone Apr 8, 2026 San Francisco 2026
Reading with Kyle Booten and Helen Shewolfe Tseng.
Era Puck Mar 2026 2026
The Era puck became the BCI in the play.
open the work pageHow to Make a Baby Jul 25, 2026 TIAT, San Francisco 2026
A participatory computer theater performance set in 2036: Prop 43 wants the childfree taxed to fund elder care, and a visionary founder arrives with a solution, hidden motives, and an invitation for everyone - including the audience.
open the work pageA Night of Computational Theater Aug 21, 2026 tiat, San Francisco 2026
An open mic of computational theater and desktop performance, hosted and curated by Halim Madi with the computational poetry reading group at tiat.
the listing ↗Techno Retro Poetics Aug 11, 2026 tiat, San Francisco 2026
Two poets, analog and multimedia readings: Ana María Caballero reading from her new book Material, and Halim Madi performing with web artifacts and the models he fine-tunes.
the listing ↗We Called Us Poetry Jun '25 Toronto 2025
Interactive performance and computational poem on AI as god vs apocalypse.
open the work pageFuture v. May '25 Online 2025
A browser piece that opens as three walls of punctuation you drag and fuse - a hub disguised as a blank page, each character a doorway.
open the work pageFeed It May '25 Seoul, South Korea 2025
A durational AI-body performance where audience answers shape a real-time generative portrait.
open the work pageI Live Here Apr '25 San Francisco, CA, USA 2025
A walking poem through San Francisco's Tenderloin, mapping queer nightlife from Beirut to the Bay.
open the work pageSquare, Powder, Claw Feb 23 SF 2025
A triptych on boyhood performed at tiat #10 (the intersection of art & technology), Internet Archive, San Francisco.
open the work pageWe Made It Dec 5-14 San Francisco 2024
Performance at Counterpulse, San Francisco - The Happy Endings Show.
open the work pageBorderline Dec '24 - Jan '25 San Francisco, CA, USA 2024
A full-body multimedia poem about borders, queerness, and the architecture of belonging.
open the work pageHappy Endings Show Sep 10 SF 2024
Make Out Room.
open the work pageAlgorithm's Embrace Jun '24 San Francisco, CA, USA 2024
Performance.
open the work pageDeserve It Dec '23 - Nov '24 San Francisco, CA, USA 2023
A durational immigration performance - a fictional visa form that scrambles your answers into poetry.
open the work pageInvasions Jun '22 - Apr '24 San Francisco, Los Angeles, CDMX, Santa Barbara, Ojai 2022
Performance piece exploring scam, intrusion, and intimacy.
open the work pageAvenir Mar '15 - Sep '17 Paris, Sao Paulo 2015
A series of site-specific interventions exploring futures, migration, and the politics of public space.
open the work pageSpoken Word Performances 2014-2024 Beirut · Paris · São Paulo · San Francisco 2014
A decade of spoken word across Beirut, Paris, São Paulo, and San Francisco.
open the work pageThe writing
Writing about computer theater, published on Substack. New pieces land there first.
- Jul 11 · 2026 Evals for Poets Part 4: The Slow Looking the singulars duel reread as releasement: two voices onstage, the audience votes, and the model is slowly transformed in return
- Mar 24 · 2026 Vibe Thinking, Part 1 written while making the digital theater piece 'i've always wanted to become everyone': almost outsourcing a mother's monologue to the next-token predictor, and what that arbitrage does to thought
- Jan 7 · 2026 The Doors We Leave Open a live talk turned participatory ritual: an audience's secret longings become a jsonl, a click on 'create' becomes contemporary magic, and a fine-tuned model speaks back
- Dec 16 · 2025 What I Learned Inside a Poetry Cage in Buenos Aires notes from performing reinforcement.exe inside a cage at devconnect, where every thirty minutes human and model wrote poems and the audience's votes became the training loop
- Nov 4 · 2025 The Wire and the Cuddle Puddle early networked performance (hole in space, satellite arts, electronic cafe) as communion: art living in the transmission between bodies and machines, kin to the mosh pit
- Sep 2 · 2025 Embodied Practice in the Age of AI: Cosmotechnics Revisited why performance art, theater, and live poetry matter more under ai: presence is not replaced by digital systems, only shifted and deepened, via yuk hui's cosmotechnics