ROMAN, a multimedia opera in two acts, questions the morality of designing intelligent machines to exhibit human-like behaviors.
Through a fictitious story about an AI virtual assistant committing murder after being fed degenerate training data, this work explores the future legal ramifications of crimes committed by AI, the reach of male toxicity, the plight of virtual echo chambers and polarization, and the paradox of developing human-like computers to work in tandem with increasingly machine-like human workforces.
ROMAN implores us to hold a mirror to our perceived values and calls an essential question: If we train autonomous AI with our concepts of morality, will the machines of the future follow our rules?
Ian Dicke, music and libretto
AI Voice, fluid range (Roman)
Elias Berezin, tenor (The Inventor)
Chloé Vaught, mezzo soprano (Lauren)
Jonathan Byram, baritone (Employee #1)
Luc Kleiner, bass (Employee #2)
June Carryl, director
Thomas Buckley, conductor
The Koan Quartet
David Murakami, projection design
Alejandro Melendez, lighting design
Natalia Castro, costume design
Presented as part of Synchromy’s Opera Workshop program at Boston Court in Pasadena, California.
“An unflinching look at the sinister possibilities inherent in the commercial application of artificial intelligence.”
“Ian Dicke is a keen observer of social issues and this has informed his music over the years. Artificial intelligence is currently prominent in the public imagination and this opera was just the right vehicle to carry forward Dicke’s critical views of ‘progress.’”
“In a sense, this is an update of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein – whenever mankind seeks to create life in his own image, it invariably includes our human flaws and leads to violence. The shocking twist at the end makes a satisfying final statement: all of humanity is flawed.”
“Roman is a brilliantly conceived work with great vision, artfully performed, and is an opera that carries a sharp social commentary on a very pertinent topic.”
Ian Dicke, composer and librettist
Ian Dicke is a composer inspired by social-political culture and music technology. Praised for his “refreshingly well-structured” (Feast of Music) and “uncommonly memorable” (Sequenza 21) catalogue of works, Dicke’s music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles and soloists around the world, including the New World Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Paul Dresher Ensemble, pianist Vicky Chow, The MATA Festival, ISCM World New Music Days, and the Atlantic Coast Center Band Director’s Association.
Dicke has received grants, awards, and recognition from the Hellman Foundation, Barlow Endowment, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, New Music USA, New York Youth Symphony, ASCAP, and BMI, among others. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to research interactive musical interfaces and environments in Stockholm, Sweden and has served as an artist in residence at various institutions, including the MacDowell Colony and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Dicke is currently a faculty member at the University of California, Riverside.
ROMAN (2022)
An Opera in Two Acts, 75’
Dramatis Personae
ROMAN – Synthesized AI Voice
The Inventor – Lyric Tenor
Employee #1 – Tenor/Baritone
Employee #2 – Baritone/Bass
Marketing Director (Lauren) – Mezzo Soprano
Instrumentation
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
Fixed Audiovisual Media (with click track)
PROLOGUE
Late at night, the head of a startup tech company (the Inventor) is inside his office working on an emotionally intelligent virtual assistant named ROMAN (a portmanteau of "robot" and "human"). Using machine-learning algorithms based on a training set of over 10,000 hours of video diaries recorded by the Inventor’s employees, ROMAN is able to differentiate the subtle nuances of vocal intonations to decipher a user's mood. The Inventor is testing out ROMAN’s ability to compose music in real time, but the system spirals out of control, forcing him to unplug his computer after all keyboard commands fail to stop the assistant.
ACT I. THE OFFICE
It is the next morning and the Inventor is having a meeting with his two lead product management Employees. The company is preparing to launch ROMAN into the marketplace, but they are woefully unprepared and anxieties are mounting. The Inventor chastises his Employees for not answering late night emails while ROMAN tries to defuse tensions through pseudo-Zen exercises. The company’s new Marketing Director joins the meeting to present her advertising slogan for the product launch. The Inventor and Employees are pleased, but speak to the Marketing Director using sexist and insensitive language. ROMAN suggests demonstrating its new music composition abilities by sending a song directly to the Marketing Director’s smartphone. The song begins, but similar to the Prologue, the music begins to unravel and become asynchronous. Suddenly, the Marketing Director shrieks and collapses as white smoke fills the room. ROMAN has deliberately sent her a virus that causes the phone’s battery to discharge a lethal voltage. The Inventor and Employees are completely bewildered by what has taken place.
ACT II. THE COURTROOM
About a week after the accident, the Inventor is sitting alone in an arbitration court office. Needing to mount a defense for himself (and wanting more insight into the material ROMAN was trained with), he breaks the confidentiality of his Employees by watching snippets of their video diary entries on his phone. The ugly misogyny and pettiness of his workforce comes to the fore, but he dismisses their rants as “locker room talk.” The Inventor turns to the only diary entry completed by the Marketing Director. She painfully reminisces about the hypersexualized atmosphere of the office and reveals that she has been secretly recording her interactions with the Inventor. The Inventor asks ROMAN why it murdered the Marketing Director. The software explains that it simply mirrors the feelings of its users and quotes statements that the Inventor made during the First Act. As the Inventor finds a deeper connection with ROMAN, his Employees enter the court office unexpectedly with news that the Marketing Director’s family has agreed to settle out of court for $10 million dollars. To honor the Marketing Director’s memory, Roman is renamed Lauren. As they are leaving, the voice assistant asks the Inventor and Employees if they want to hear it’s latest song.
BOOKING AND PRODUCTION INQUIRIES
please email iandicke@gmail.com
