This page will allow you to generate your own instructions for performance art pieces in the style of our current exhibit Embodying the Algorithm using GPT-3’s DaVinci model. Each time you refresh this page, a new performance that has been previously generated using GPT-3 will be displayed. If you would like to record and submit your own performance based on one of the generated texts, please see the instructions on our Submissions page.

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Instructions for a performance by GPT-3:

A work of performance art: Performance artist Jillian Mayer eats a cake meant for the birthday of her brother, artist David Mayer, who died in 2012. Credit:Courtesy of Paula Court “I’m sad, but I’m happy to be doing this,” said Mayer, who wore a plaid shirt, a T-shirt from a residency in the Galapagos Islands and a black hoodie with the word “BAD” printed in bold letters. “I’m trying to make a work of performance art around the idea of his birthday.” Mayer’s brother, David, was a performance artist who died in 2012 at the age of 34. He was born on May 29, 1978, a date that meant as much to him as birthdays do to many people. The artist, who distributed photographs of himself with a cake every year, would have turned 39 this year. His work often involved elaborate cakes, such as a birthday cake topped with a toy car and an action figure that he shared with a homeless man. Mayer, who said she has been a professional pastry chef, had already baked and frozen the cake before she decided to make it into a memorial project. “It’s hard to do a tribute to someone who was as much about performance art and ephemera as he was about objects,” she said. The cake, which was made in a green-and-white striped cake mold, was dotted with miniature toy cars and boats. Mayer said her brother loved toy cars and boats. Mayer said she considered eating a piece of the cake and donating the rest to a homeless shelter, but decided to burn it. She was accompanied by her fiance, Chicago-based sculptor Steve Hammer, and the couple’s two dogs, a husky-labrador mix named Daisy and a beagle-basset hound mix named Meatball.