“AND THEN THE WORLD ENDED” is an interdisciplinary, installation opera which investigates the multifarious effects of technology on our collective human consciousness. The work confronts the dangerous erosion of truth and trust in our society, which is rapidly intensifying due to advancing AI, computational propaganda, deepfakes, and other tools that manipulate and obscure reality. Inspired by classical forms (generated and manipulated through AI) the piece is a collaboration between human and non-human approaches to creativity, conjuring a phantasmagoria of processed video, music, text and performance. This new opera installation considers our vulnerable, overwhelmed information ecosystem, setting in motion a quasi-supernatural invasion of malfunctioning and overreaching intelligent machines, where nothing is as it appears, and no one is safe.

Composer - Zach Layton