AI-driven Ring Cycle sparks boos at 150th anniversary Wagner Festival

BAYREUTH, Germany (AP) — Richard Wagner likely would have appreciated the cutting-edge technology, if not the reaction.Scenery selected by artificial intelligence sparked boos at the 150th anniversary performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle from an audience frustrated that software could integrate images but not drama.Called “10010110” — the number 150 in written in binary — the staging is subtitled “From Myth to Code" and was intended to portray the history of “Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)," a series of four operas about the destruction of gods by humans, giants and dwarfs. It was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the full cycle's premiere from Aug. 13-17, 1876, at the Festspielhaus theater built to Wagner's specifications atop a Bavarian hill.Curator Marcus Lobbes developed the concept with Nils Corte and dramaturge Andri Hardmeier, feeding computers about 1,000 images culled from the 15 prior Bayreuth Ring productions. They did not intend to produce a cohesi