MAX (Media Art Xploration), in association with New York Live Arts, will present its first New York City-based arts festival MAXlive 2021: The Neuroverse, consisting of theatre and dance performances, audio installations and lectures, teaming artists with scientists to explore innovations in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and the human-machine collaboration. The festival runs November 5–7 at New York Live Arts, New Inc’s ONX Studio for Extended Reality, and the Invisible Dog Art Center.

Theatre offerings include work-in-progress performances of Ethan Lipton’s We Are Your Robots, a comedic exploration of what humans want from their machines, directed by Leigh Silverman and featuring Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra; and a reading from Andy Bragen’s Johnsville Road, developed in collaboration with Daniel Fish.

Other highlights include:

• Siren: Listening to Another Species on Earth, an immersive whale song audiovisual installation by composer Annie Lewandowski and artist/coder Kyle McDonald;
• Stephanie Dinkins’ Secret Garden, which uses extended reality technology to immerse audiences in Black women’s stories from across generations;
• Wandering Mind, from Gershon Dublon & Xin Liu (slow immediate), an auditory world tour using over 10,000 field recordings;
• OÁYE AI, a photo series by Boys and Girls Club of Rosebud exploring Lakota cosmology and an alternative approach to developing AI;
• Philipp Schmitt's How AI Lost Its Body, a lecture-performance chronicling the creation of AI;
• NUUM Collective's Dopplegänger, a dance piece using a machine to create a duet between the artists and themselves;
• Lizardly, a mixed-reality performance by Kat Mustatea & Heidi Boisvert, about a human couple tranforming into reptiles;
• Grayson Earle’s Inference Engine, an interactive installation set aboard a spacecraft.

For more information, a festival schedule, and ticketing, click here.