Authority Figures
Proposal Type
Performance
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
Authority Figures is a live networked performance that stages authorship as a governed and contested process rather than a stable identity. The work critiques contemporary efforts either to elevate AI systems as authors or to defend human authorship as a threatened category. Instead of resolving this debate, the performance exposes the infrastructural mechanisms through which claims of authorship are constructed, weighted, and legitimized. From hypertext’s early promise of distributed textuality to the platform logics that now govern digital culture, creative recognition has always been shaped by technical systems. Yet the rules that determine who receives credit often remain invisible. Authority Figures makes those rules perceptible by turning infrastructural governance into the central dramatic element. Drawing on theories of distributed cognition and platform-mediated authorship, the performance situates creative agency within a system of interacting humans, algorithms, and rule-based constraints. Over a 10–12 minute live session on Zoom, three human performers engage two AI agents in a visible negotiation over the source code of a running p5.js generative e-lit artwork. The live canvas, editable code, revision history, and chat interface are screen-shared, transforming the conferencing platform into a layered textual environment. The AI agents embody contrasting rhetorical positions: one advocates for computational creativity and the legitimacy of machine authorship, while the other destabilizes the coherence of authorship itself. The human performers intervene by editing the code and contesting the agents’ claims. Remote audience members participate through the chat channel—submitting critiques, voting on proposed edits, and, as the session progresses, feeding input directly to the agents. Participation expands over the course of the performance, increasing the number of actors influencing the system. Each revision is logged and visualized through a dynamic authorship meter that assigns proportional credit according to predefined criteria, tracking audience, performer, and agent contributions separately. Crucially, these criteria are neither neutral nor hidden. The weighting logic—what counts as contribution, how revisions are valued, how influence is calculated—is revealed and interrogated during the performance. As inputs multiply, the distribution shifts visibly: a live demonstration of how governance structures reshape attribution in real time. As the code is revised, overwritten, and reweighted, authority migrates among performers, agents, audience members, and the orchestration system that constrains them. The generative artwork becomes secondary to the regulatory process that produces it. By foregrounding the rules that structure contribution, Authority Figures suggests that debates about AI authorship obscure a deeper issue: authorship has long been mediated by platforms, protocols, and institutional criteria that determine recognition. The performance concludes by freezing the final artifact and exposing its revision lineage. Rather than asking whether AI can be an author, the work reframes the debate: does AI involvement fundamentally alter authorship, or does it merely expose the mechanisms through which authorship has always been calculated and performed?
Authority Figures
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Authority Figures is a live networked performance that stages authorship as a governed and contested process rather than a stable identity. The work critiques contemporary efforts either to elevate AI systems as authors or to defend human authorship as a threatened category. Instead of resolving this debate, the performance exposes the infrastructural mechanisms through which claims of authorship are constructed, weighted, and legitimized. From hypertext’s early promise of distributed textuality to the platform logics that now govern digital culture, creative recognition has always been shaped by technical systems. Yet the rules that determine who receives credit often remain invisible. Authority Figures makes those rules perceptible by turning infrastructural governance into the central dramatic element. Drawing on theories of distributed cognition and platform-mediated authorship, the performance situates creative agency within a system of interacting humans, algorithms, and rule-based constraints. Over a 10–12 minute live session on Zoom, three human performers engage two AI agents in a visible negotiation over the source code of a running p5.js generative e-lit artwork. The live canvas, editable code, revision history, and chat interface are screen-shared, transforming the conferencing platform into a layered textual environment. The AI agents embody contrasting rhetorical positions: one advocates for computational creativity and the legitimacy of machine authorship, while the other destabilizes the coherence of authorship itself. The human performers intervene by editing the code and contesting the agents’ claims. Remote audience members participate through the chat channel—submitting critiques, voting on proposed edits, and, as the session progresses, feeding input directly to the agents. Participation expands over the course of the performance, increasing the number of actors influencing the system. Each revision is logged and visualized through a dynamic authorship meter that assigns proportional credit according to predefined criteria, tracking audience, performer, and agent contributions separately. Crucially, these criteria are neither neutral nor hidden. The weighting logic—what counts as contribution, how revisions are valued, how influence is calculated—is revealed and interrogated during the performance. As inputs multiply, the distribution shifts visibly: a live demonstration of how governance structures reshape attribution in real time. As the code is revised, overwritten, and reweighted, authority migrates among performers, agents, audience members, and the orchestration system that constrains them. The generative artwork becomes secondary to the regulatory process that produces it. By foregrounding the rules that structure contribution, Authority Figures suggests that debates about AI authorship obscure a deeper issue: authorship has long been mediated by platforms, protocols, and institutional criteria that determine recognition. The performance concludes by freezing the final artifact and exposing its revision lineage. Rather than asking whether AI can be an author, the work reframes the debate: does AI involvement fundamentally alter authorship, or does it merely expose the mechanisms through which authorship has always been calculated and performed?
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2026/algorithmsandimaginaries/schedule/21
Bio
John T. Murray is Associate Professor at the Univ. of Central Florida. He is co-author of Flash: Building the Interactive Web and Adventure Games: Playing the Outsider. He authored "Salt Immortal Sea" with Mark Marino, Joellyn Rock, and Ken Joseph and "Shields Down" with Mark Marino and Maria Reyes.
Mark C. Marino is a writer and scholar of electronic literature. His works include “a show of hands” (ELC2), "The Ballad of Workstudy Seth," and Mrs. Wobbles and the Tangerine House. He directs the Humanities and Critical Code Studies Lab at USC .
María Cecilia Reyes, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Media Production and Communication Theory at the Social Communication Department at Universidad del Norte in Colombia. Her research and artistic practice focus on interactive digital narratives design, immersive technologies and filmmaking. Postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Educational Technologies at the Italian Research Council (CNR-ITD). Artist-in-residence 2021 at Schloss Solitude Akademie and at Future Media Theaters Lab 2022. www.xehreyes.net