Sensorium Ex
An Opera in Verse
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Sensorium Ex
Narrated by:
Brenda Shaughnessy, Ju-Hyeon Han, Joshua Jeremiah, Lucia Lucas, Hailey Mcavoy, Paola Prestini
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In this story of the scientist DR. MEM and KITSUNE, her nonambulatory, non-speaking son, the pair fight CORP, a mega-company developing the most powerful AI robot ever conceived. What MEM learns is that CORP seeks "To give the robot something real. / What it can fake but not make: / mercy, compassion. Trust and love." That is, CORP hopes to harvest and own not just their employees' personal data but their thoughts, memories, and their sensory experiences, in order to build a robot that will contain all that is and ever was human, and replace the need for humans themselves.
This swift drama, which unfolds in a libretto/ script format, with dialogue in Shaughnessy's accessible and blistering verse, shows how MEM and her coworkers fight to save their individuality from being vacuumed up. A Greek-style chorus reflects on the state of a world where "taking leave of our senses" becomes a serious and quite literal threat, as MEM struggles to fulfill her singular role in fighting the high-tech of corrupt capitalism. At the center of this all-too-relevant speculative drama burns MEM's most powerful weapon against the forces of AI darkness: a mother's love.
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Critic Reviews
“[Sensorium Ex] captures the complexity of distinctions between corporate control of technology and its possibilities. . . . This story of mother and son itself offers a compelling contribution to human-centered literature about robots, AI, and disability, marked by Shaughnessy’s sure hand as a poet turned librettist.” —Literary Hub
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