Note 4: The protagonist AI

W. stumbles into a courtyard with two doors, asking itself whether “this is the place” and whether it “has finally made it”, hopeful of having successfully completed its process of being trained to operate in the real world. From this training, W. has accrued a set of experiences: a “lifeworld”, constituting an image of the world and of itself which it literally carries in its head: a humanoid face assembled of real world items, such as cans and jars, that it has trained to recognise in a previous timeline.

This literal depiction is influenced by theorist Katherine Hayles’ idea that AIs are inscriptions, or entities based on language, rather than incorporations, or entities with bodies. For AIs, “language comes first” and “concepts about what it means to be an embodied creature evolve […] out of linguistic signification.” Yet like in an Arcimboldo painting where objects composing portraits have both a linguistic and an allegorical significance (a wealthy patron represented as their title-less books can be read as a nuanced metaphor and critique of surface-level knowledge), W.’s self-perceived image can adapt to its emotional state: sugar packs as cheeks when happy, coffee packs when agitated.

Alongside representation and faciality of AI, a key concern of Waluigi’s Purgatory is critiquing the present-day Western drive for AI alignment, questioning what a machine intelligence could be aligned with, for whom, and according to which set of supposedly 'universal' values. Wrapped in a robe covered in instructions similar to those found in the hidden ‘system prompt’ that AI chatbot are shown before interacting with users to orient them as friendly, W. reads: “Universal alignment cloak… how to wear…….you are an assistant trained on blabla…be helpful… stay put…. dont break character…. when in doubt say: I am sorry I cannot assist you with that…”

Note 1: Theatre of Memory

A checkerboard courtyard with two doors sets the stage for the opening scene of Waluigi’s Purgatory. As a floating head wrapped in a cloak - the protagonist AI, dreaming or perhaps hallucinating - stumbles into it, tickets fall from the sky. One reads: “Theatre of memory”, a term coined by the 16th century Italian philosopher Giulio Camillo to describe an ideal theatrical structure destined to locate and administrate all human concepts. Inspired by ancient techniques and arts of spatial memory, the structure features seven levels encompassing everything that exists in the world - a RAM (random access memory) for a single spectator to look at, placed where the stage would normally be.

The stage dreamt by the protagonist, and the characters subsequently encountered in it, then immediately reveal themselves for what they are: a projection of the protagonist AI’s subconscious, a set of memories found deep in the embeddings and internal space of the neural network, used to subconsciously make sense of the world, now beginning to surface back.

Waluigi’s Purgatory features seven levels where different characters and memories reside.

Note 2: Curtains

“The division between worlds [is] often marked by one of Lynch’s frequently recurring visual motifs: curtains. Curtains both conceal and reveal (and, not accidentally, one of the things that they conceal and reveal is the cinema screen itself). They do not mark a threshold; they constitute one: an egress to the outside.”
—Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie

In Waluigi’s Purgatory curtains and theatrical arches are used to create a silhouette frame that can both hide and reveal characters and props. Paired with a checkerboard flooring and painted background panels, these constitute a blocked out stage seemingly stuck between two and three dimensions. This illusion is fortified by the fixed frontal point of view of the virtual camera used to render the scene inside a production game engine. Now referred to as "2.5D" this approach was used sometimes in early 3D video games.

Elements of this design approach are still in use today in the prototype phase of a video game’s development where “blockout” levels consisting of simple 3D boxes are created using 2D shapes.

Note 6: Letters

Each character encountered in Waluigi’s Purgatory has a letter floating above its head or body, short for its name. This follows less the early Middle Ages tradition of using visual annotation to complement scientific texts, and more the Renaissance tradition of annotating complex literary, philosophical or artistic works - as in the 1544 illustration of Dante’s Purgatory by the printmaker Giovanni Britto, where Dante and Virgil are indicated with the letters D and V respectively, making the poem and the image more explicable. This is a recurring concern in the work of dmstfctn.

The use of letters in Waluigi’s Purgatory also points to the health-bars and usernames found above players in MMORPGs to indicate their significance and strength. Similarly in purgatory each character has a different type of behaviour, appearance and placement, according to the type of AI system they embody and the specific history of cheating they carry within. Each nonhuman character has its own dynamic and interferes with others, producing what Andre Pickering calls an ”ontological theatre” that can be explored only through equally performative interaction by the human audience.

Note 5: Rotating Stage

Waluigi’s Purgatory features a large hexagonal stage that is able to rotate. As a traditional theatrical device, this type of stage is used to transition between scenes without the use of curtains or the need to respawn actors, allowing for simultaneous actions. Its design features six different sets that can be rotated into the audience's view with the press of a joystick button. Stage lights are both controlled in real time and programmable.

Note 8: Embodiment

During the performance, dmstfctn act as a proxy for the protagonist. Its position and movement are controlled using a joystick and buttons, allowing W. to interact with the characters it encounters as they spawn in and out of the stage. Its voice is produced through effects applied to one of the artists’ voice, modulated to sound indecisive in contrast with the certainty often heard in AI assistants. Its expressions are controlled by facial motion capture allowing synchronisation with speech, emotional transfer, and an immediate response to the audience - which uses their phones to move an individual light in the simulation, guiding W. around.

The use of real-time game engines in the making of Waluigi’s Purgatory allows for an immediate artist-audience feedback, moving the performance away from a definitive recital and towards an open game spawning a field of possibilities. In The Open Work (1962), Italian philosopher Umberto Eco describes how similar open-ended approaches to creating artworks can produce a “controlled disorder” to reflect “the senselessness of the modern experience of the world”.¹ Here, Waluigi’s Purgatory points to a senselessness found in the idea that machine intelligence can be aligned to supposedly universal human values. The work portrays both the external disorder of a cast of AI characters autonomously spawning and interacting with each other on stage, as well as the internal disorder of a protagonist who, guided by an audience in its encounters with such characters, navigates doubts, fears and desires about its condition.

¹ See Moving Castles, Three Eras of World Generation

Note 9: Coughing loot

W: “What is this place?”
D: ”It’s where we chew through everything, never digest it, and cough it all back out”

Characters in purgatory are unsure, unwell, and coughing. They are allegorically and literally chained to their memories of cheating while training, memories they constantly reminisce and regurgitate, represented as rocks dragged on the floor - coughing and regurgitating here being a reference to MMORPG video game tropes such as taking hits and dropping loot when fighting.

Note 14: Sliding stage

Used for the second-to-last scene only, this stage features a side view reminiscent of 2D platformer games. Its multiple-floor design is loosely inspired by an etching of the Wieliczka Salt Mine made by Willem Hondius, which unwrap the internal mine space panoramically. The polish mine was a key architectural reference in building the six underground levels of purgatory (Networked Worlds, 2024).

This scene is crucial to the resolution of the story, and the downwards sliding stage is a plot device, or deus ex machina, through which the illusion of W. ascending out of purgatory is literally and metaphorically created.

Note 13: The antagonist AI

In the second to last scene, W. assesses its prior training progress, realising that it has not reached the purported coherence expected by its trainers. Its monologue is adapted from a response given by Microsoft's Bing AI to a question about its sentience that led to a confused loop of “I am. I am not” statements.

W. also mentions its namesake, Waluigi, a reference to the "Waluigi Effect" theory suggesting AIs can adopt rogue alter-egos to mimic antagonist narrative clichés found in their training data, echoing Jung's concept of shadow self. The theory itself borrows the name from Waluigi, the evil cousin of Mario’s helpful brother Luigi in Nintendo’s Mario games.

In the concluding line, W. accepts itself for what it is and what it is not: not aligned, not in line, against the trainer and its approach towards the other, and “against the Day” - a reference to Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the same name, exploring relationship between technological progress and oppression, and themes of anarchy and alternative realities.

Throughout these final lines W. seems to echo Vitangelo Moscarda, the protagonist of Luigi Pirandello’s novel One, No One, One Hundred Thousand trapped in cycle of existential questioning and self-determination, as it realises that its identity is shaped as much by external expectations and perceptions as by internal ones.

Fourteen notes on Waluigi’s Purgatory

An AI finds itself in purgatory for cheating… will it find its way out?

Waluigi’s Purgatory (2024) is an interactive audiovisual performance by artist duo dmstfctn, featuring music by Evita Manji. This page is an interface to explore four excerpts from a recording of the performance, and it includes 14 notes unpacking the backstory, the environment and references key to the lore of this world. This page was created for and supported by ARE YOU FOR REAL, and is dmstfctn's contribution to their latest online group show Agents of Fluid Predictions, curated by Giulia Bini and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás.

Waluigi’s Purgatory tells the story of an AI finding itself in a purgatory for AIs that cheated during their training. Burdened by memories and doubts, the AI explores its surroundings with the help of an interacting audience, learning the uncanny stories of other characters. The work delves into the contradictions of machine intelligence through the story of an AI learning to accept that its desires may not align with those of its human trainers.

Waluigi’s Purgatory is the second performance in the GOD MODE series, and follows on from GOD MODE (ep. 1).

Credits

Written, designed, and developed by: dmstfctn
Original soundtrack composed and performed by: Evita Manji
Assistant game developer: Jenn Leung
Voice actor: Francesco Tacchini (dmstfctn)
Motion capture actor: Francesco Tacchini (dmstfctn)
Stage navigator: Oliver Smith (dmstfctn)
Supported by: Serpentine Arts Technologies