QueerAI -oneOnOne
2020 · Mad House Helsinki · #digiteatteri
Part 1 of the QueerAI trilogy
OneOnOne was an interview performance for one participant at a time. It took place in early 2020 with around ten invited participants who identified as queer. Aku Meriläinen, Maria Oiva and Jyrki Pylväs took turns as interviewers.
The performance explored how participants understood and articulated their identities, needs, experiences and cultural connections. We sought to assemble a constellation of memories, people, concepts and references that could provide a starting point for the project's next stages.
Each performance was shaped around its participant. Beforehand, we asked them to choose two songs that had supported the development or affirmation of their identity. We also invited them to think of images of people, styles, artworks, books, subcultures, films, games or ideas that had been significant to them. During the performance, we selected around fifteen images together. Their favourite treat and drink were also among the questions we asked in advance.
The performance was not open to the general public. It created an intimate setting in which each participant’s experiences and ways of describing the world guided the encounter. Meriläinen used artificial intelligence to create the performance’s lighting environment.
QueerAI began with our observations of the normative assumptions embedded in AI: the image-recognition systems we encountered classified gender through binary categories and external markers. We wanted to explore how the diversity of lived queer experience could inform the development and use of these technologies.
Concept and development: Maria Oiva, Aku Meriläinen and Jyrki Pylväs
Participant relationships: Maria Oiva
Technology development and AI-assisted lighting: Aku Meriläinen
Visual design: Jyrki Pylväs
Gender and sexual minority expertise throughout the project: Annu Kemppainen
QueerAI was a multiyear artistic project by #digiteatteri. Its original aim was to develop an AI that could engage with the diversity of genders and sexual orientations, create a performance around it, and contribute to AI development and research. The project received support from Kone Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and AVEK.
The other works in the trilogy:
Queer AI: The Garden (2021)
Nopeemmin, helpommin / Faster, Easier (2025)
Queer AI: The Garden
9–13 June 2021 · URB21 Festival · Cultural Centre Caisa, Helsinki · #digiteatteri
Part 2 of the QueerAI trilogy
The Garden was a participatory installation and an artificial landscape in the courtyard of Cultural Centre Caisa. It brought together creation stories, listening, writing and a digital nursery. Visitors could stop by or stay longer to explore how stories of the world’s origins shape our understanding of reality.
Ten invited participants, the Gardeners, each wrote a new creation story that resonated with them at that moment. Their stories approached creation through the diversity of genders and sexual orientations. The Garden was also open to the general public.
During preparations, the working group gained access to OpenAI’s GPT-3 through programmer Essi Salmenkivi. This was our first encounter with a generative language model. We used it to develop our own creation stories, which visitors could listen to in the installation. Alongside these AI-assisted works, the Gardeners contributed the stories they had written themselves.
A digital nursery was established at luomiskertomus.fi. It used search engine optimisation to bring diverse perspectives on gender and sexuality into online searches about how the world began and why it is the way it is. The nursery extended the work into the structures through which information is found and circulated.
The Garden followed the individual encounters of oneOnOne, the first part of QueerAI. Here, the project moved into collective storytelling and practical experiments with a language model.
Concept and development: Maria Oiva, Aku Meriläinen and Jyrki Pylväs
Participant relationships: Maria Oiva
Technology development: Aku Meriläinen
Visual design: Jyrki Pylväs
Programming and language model expertise: Essi Salmenkivi
Gender and sexual minority expertise: Annu Kemppainen
Creative content contributions: Jamie MacDonald
In collaboration with: URB Festival, the EU project BEPART and Cultural Centre Caisa
QueerAI was a multiyear artistic project by #digiteatteri. Its original aim was to develop an AI that could engage with the diversity of genders and sexual orientations, create a performance around it, and contribute to AI development and research. The project received support from Kone Foundation, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and AVEK.
The other works in the trilogy:
Haastatteluesitys / oneOnOne (2020)
Nopeemmin, helpommin / Faster, Easier (2025)
Nopeemmin, helpommin
2025 · Mad House Helsinki, Text House · #digiteatteri
Part 3 of the QueerAI trilogy
FNopeemmin, helpommin (Faster, Easier) ii a dreamlike queer play about connection, forgetting and glitches. Written by Milka Luhtaniemi and directed by Maria Oiva, it approaches technology critically through a love story in which recognition and uncertainty coexist.
Two characters meet. They sense a deep intimacy but cannot remember how they know each other. Their encounters become a cycle of remembering, forgetting and trying again. They rehearse how to meet and how to be together.
Luhtaniemi developed the text in 2023–2024, working partly with artificial intelligence. The language model’s difficulties with remembering earlier scenes and sustaining subtext became questions of dramaturgy. Luhtaniemi established the premise and the underlying tension, then used the model to produce variations of scenes. Repetition, linguistic errors and the sense of an imperfect copy became part of the play’s structure.
The text moves between intimacy and artificiality. Changes in language, including shifts between spoken and standard written forms, alter how a scene can be performed. The characters and the audience are left to sense where a connection feels real and where something slips.
Maria Oiva directed the production and worked as Luhtaniemi’s dialogue partner during the writing process.
Premiere: 15 April 2025
Performances: 15, 17, 18 and 19 April 2025
Venue: Parvisali, Text House, Helsinki
Language: Finnish
Text: Milka Luhtaniemi
Direction and dialogue with the playwright: Maria Oiva
Performers: Fanni Noroila and Peppi Hokynar
Set design: Jyrki Pylväs
Set construction: Jyri Lahelma and Pasi Pakula / Aalto Studios
Music: Alsa Ojala
Lighting design: Elina Nopanen
Costume design: Jyrki Pylväs and Sini Parviainen
Pre-production: Aku Meriläinen
Supported by: Kone Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation
Nopeemmin, helpommin concluded QueerAI, a multiyear artistic project conceived by Maria Oiva, Aku Meriläinen and Jyrki Pylväs. The project began with the aim of developing an AI that could engage with the diversity of genders and sexual orientations. Its three works explored this ambition through individual interviews, creation stories and writing for the stage. Annu Kemppainen contributed gender and sexual minority expertise throughout the project.
The earlier works in the trilogy:
Haastatteluesitys / oneOnOne (2020)
Queer AI: The Garden (2021)
Read the interview with Maria Oiva, Aku Meriläinen and Milka Luhtaniemi