Performance excerpt · 3:12 · Ash Eliza Smith + Robert TwomeyWatch on Vimeo ↗

Co-created, produced, directed, and hosted by Ash Eliza Smith and Robert Twomey. With the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute community and the project’s artists, performers, and researchers. Full project credits and acknowledgments ↓

Before the evening performance, Smith, Twomey, and their team convened an AI writers’ room with members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. In the participatory theater workshop, community members learned to prompt generative AI and worked together to write a new short radio play inspired by Leonardo da Vinci.

The writing moved from the workshop into the public performance that same evening. Participants could also choose to take the stage as readers. Their contribution appears in the program’s Da Vinci + AI section, bringing the OLLI community into the work as co-writers and performers.

Fluids, Flights, Feathers brings an AI writers’ room into live radio theater and cinema. Co-created and hosted by Ash Eliza Smith and Robert Twomey, the work combines material developed with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute community with written scenes, a live score, and projected imagery. Smith and Twomey’s banter and improvisation connect the sections, weaving the evening together as it unfolds.

Smith and Twomey host the work from within the performance. Their recurring banter and live improvisation carry the audience between the pieces, making space for shifts in subject, voice, and rhythm. These exchanges are part of how the work is composed in the room: the hosts pick up threads from one section and carry them into the next, weaving the evening together.

The stage becomes a shared workspace. Scripts and sound equipment remain in view as live narration moves alongside recorded voices and generated imagery. The microphone passes between performers, and the changing voices reshape the work.

Jim Schroeder’s live score, with contributions and live performance from Hank Ball and live audio mixing by Marina Kushner, gives the spoken scenes a changing sonic environment. Close-up cameras bring the act of speaking into the projected image, placing the performer inside the world being described.

Ten named sections give the performance its structure. Smith and Twomey’s hosting and improvised exchanges run between them, connecting community writing, artist-authored scenes, and contributions on birds and fluid dynamics.

1. Da Vinci Was a Speculative DesignerText by Ash Eliza Smith; performed by Olli Jenkins
2. Birding While IndianWith Tom Gannon
3. Drawing as a Mode of ApprehensionText by Robert Twomey; performed by Elaina Franzen
4. Da Vinci + AIDeveloped in the AI writers’ room with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute community
5. Flying MachinesBy Lincoln Graham
6. Surveillance + FashionBy Olli Jenkins and Elaina Franzen
7. Wind: Fluid MediaBy Sam Bendix, with Adam Larios
8. The Social Lives of BirdsWith Dai Shizuka
9. Murmurings on the WindBy Sam Bendix
10. Wind SeedsBy Hannah Romell

Commissioned by Nebraska Public Media, this adaptation of Smith and Twomey’s ongoing Radio Play project was created for Art + The Machine at the Sheldon Museum of Art. The event responded to the PBS documentary Leonardo da Vinci, directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon.

The workshop and evening program brought together community participants, artists, students, and researchers. Da Vinci’s studies became an invitation to work across art and science, using the tools of the present to try out what a future might sound like.

Event documentation

Event film · Nebraska Public MediaWatch on YouTube ↗

A co-production of the Speculative Devices Lab and the Machine Cohabitation Lab.

Co-created, produced and directed by

Ash Eliza SmithSpeculative Devices Lab, Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Robert TwomeyMachine Cohabitation Lab, Department of Visual Arts, UC San Diego

Live hosts and improvisation

Ash Eliza Smith
Robert Twomey

AI writers’ room

Led by Ash Eliza Smith and Robert Twomey with the project team.

Co-created with members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, with participants also joining the evening performance.

Sound design and composition

Jim Schroeder

Contributions and live performance

Hank Ball

Live audio mixing

Marina Kushner

Producer

Maggie NelsonNebraska Public Media

Project team

Reid BrockmeierLive performance, video, camera switching

Sam BendixWriter, performer, generative AI and cinema visuals, audio editing

Olli JenkinsWriter, performer

Elaina FranzenWriter, performer

Lincoln GrahamWriter, performer

Wyatt DebbanCinematographer

Hannah RomellWriter, performer, cinematographer

Kylie MullerEditor

Contributions to the performance

Tom GannonBirding While Indian

Adam LariosWind: Fluid Media

Dai ShizukaThe Social Lives of Birds