Fluid, Feathers, and Flight: Codex Ex Machina
Performance, Video/Animation
2024-2025
Performance Excerpt
Roles: Writer, Co-Producer, Visual Design Lead, + Technical Developer
Developed the main visual language for the piece including graphics, as well as edited all videos for the background visuals. Additionally wrote 3 sections of the piece and performed 2 of them. Supported the other section writing, audio editing, and co-led the logistical aspects of the piece.
Fluids, Flights, and Feathers: Codex Ex Machina is a live cinema–meets–radio theater event exploring our enduring fascination with flight—real, imagined, and remembered. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s bird studies and speculative flying machines, the piece weaves together AI-generated storytelling, live sound, and spatial media to trace poetic connections between feathers and drones, migration and memory, nature and machine.
Created by artists Ash Eliza Smith and Robert Twomey and developed in collaboration with community participants from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI at UNL), the performance invites the audience into an atmospheric, interactive world shaped by wind, motion, and the sounds of flight.
The project reflects on wind as media—both metaphor and material force. From the plains to the prairies, the wind has long carried stories: of freedom and destruction, of settler madness and multispecies kinship. It evokes da Vinci’s visionary designs and the atmospheric pressures of today’s climate anxieties, linking early innovation with contemporary questions of technology, ecology, and collective memory.
Developed the main visual language for the piece including graphics, as well as edited all videos for the background visuals. Additionally wrote 3 sections of the piece and performed 2 of them. Supported the other section writing, audio editing, and co-led the logistical aspects of the piece.
Fluids, Flights, and Feathers: Codex Ex Machina is a live cinema–meets–radio theater event exploring our enduring fascination with flight—real, imagined, and remembered. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s bird studies and speculative flying machines, the piece weaves together AI-generated storytelling, live sound, and spatial media to trace poetic connections between feathers and drones, migration and memory, nature and machine.
Created by artists Ash Eliza Smith and Robert Twomey and developed in collaboration with community participants from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI at UNL), the performance invites the audience into an atmospheric, interactive world shaped by wind, motion, and the sounds of flight.
The project reflects on wind as media—both metaphor and material force. From the plains to the prairies, the wind has long carried stories: of freedom and destruction, of settler madness and multispecies kinship. It evokes da Vinci’s visionary designs and the atmospheric pressures of today’s climate anxieties, linking early innovation with contemporary questions of technology, ecology, and collective memory.
Workshop + Performance
This event dovetailed with a half day workshop on January 23rd with the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, working through the fundamentals of co-creation with generative AI—with contents and performers participating in the evening performance.
- Afternoon Workshop: A participatory session on co-creating with generative AI, led by Smith, Twomey, and their team, culminating in a collaboratively written radio play.
- Evening Performance: A live theater and sound experience performed with OLLI members, featuring excerpts from the PBS Leonardo da Vinci documentary and a conversation about the creative process.
The project features binaural and spatial audio, live visuals, and participatory storytelling. Future iterations may explore partnerships with bird experts such as Dai Shizuki and Tom Gannon (Birding While Indian) and mathmetician Adam Larios, integrating migration patterns , bird calls, and fluid dynamics to deepen the ecological entanglements.
Creative Team
Leads
Contributors
With special thanks to the workshop participants from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNL
Creative Team
Leads
- Ash Eliza Smith – Speculative Devices Lab, UNL
- Robert Twomey – Machine Cohabitation Lab, UC San Diego
Contributors
- Reid Brockmeier
- Sam Bendix
- Olli Jenkins
- Elaina Franzen
- Lincoln Graham
- Wyatt Debben
- Hannah Rommell
- Jim Schroeder
- Marina Kushner
- Hank Ball
With special thanks to the workshop participants from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNL