P4R4DISE
P4R4DISE had it’s world premiere at Aveny-T, Copenhagen – 5 September 2025 and will attend the international days at CPH STAGE 2026.
Can artificial intelligence help us understand - and restore - the nature we have destroyed?
Can new technology guide us back to something we have lost, a loss that may reach beyond the mythology of the Fall in the Garden of Eden, - back to the beginning of language.
PARADISE takes the audience on a technopoetic expedition in which artificial intelligence, researchers, and living plants merge in a digital 3D universe. The performance poses the question: Can something artificial create a connection with nature’s hidden language, and can technology help us understand and perhaps save our planet? PARADIS is an attempt to return to the point of origin – the Garden of Eden before the fall. Can we, as humans, regain our connection to nature, or has the balance been irreversibly shifted?
A new balance between human, nature, and technology
Imagine a laboratory where two researchers – one with a natural scientific approach and the other with a cultural-anthropological perspective – together with an artificial intelligence attempt to crack the code of nature’s algorithms. With the help of AI, they will discover new ways of communicating with nature, as the performance’s living plants themselves create music and sounds that influence both the scenography and the audience.
The audience is not merely passive spectators, but becomes an active part of the work, which is generated in real time by an AI that improvises dialogue and creates visual universes. The performance’s hybrid, digital, and physical elements challenge the boundary between the natural and the artificial, inviting us to reflect on how technology can contribute to healing nature. But it is also a love story about the world’s first couple, who, with humor, attempt to return to the primal image of Paradise and bring focus to our ability to understand one another. Is it even possible for us to both be human in the world and at the same time be part of nature?
With a technological and scenographic vision that breaks boundaries, the creators seek to explore whether we can use artificial intelligence as a mirror that reflects our own relationship to nature and the climate crisis. Through interactive 3D animations and soundscapes created by plants and their electrical impulses, they aim to find a new balance between human, nature, and technology.
CREDITS
A PERFORMANCE BY Carl Emil Carlsen, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm & Mikael Fock SCRIPT & DIRECTION Mikael Fock VISUAL ARTIST, INTERACTION DESIGNER Carl Emil Carlsen AI ARTIST Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm PERFORMERS Luise Kirsten Skov, Mathias Rahbæk & an improvising artificial intelligence COMPOSER Paul Khadra AI AND AI VISUALS ARTificial mind by Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm and her team: Mathias Warnich, Cody Lukas Anderson, Asbjørn Olling, Emil Norsker & Jannie Haagemann LIGHTING DESIGN & STAGE TECHNOLOGY Vertigo / Jeppe Deibjerg COSTUME DESIGN Rikke Juellund DRAMATURG Linnea Fabricius PRODUCER Mikael Fock Productions