AI as intermediary in modern-day ritual: An immersive, interactive production of the roller disco musical Xanadu at UCLA

TL;DR

This paper explores how ritualistic design principles can foster collaborative, multi-user human-AI interactions in an immersive musical production, demonstrating new ways for AI to support group creativity and shared experiences.

Contribution

It introduces a ritual-based framework for designing multi-user AI interactions in live performances, expanding beyond single-user paradigms and showcasing practical implementation in a musical theater setting.

Findings

Audience contributed sketches and moves translated by AI into virtual scenery.

Performers guided audience interaction and managed group dynamics.

AI systems facilitated a human-AI feedback loop shaping the virtual environment.

Abstract

Interfaces for contemporary large language, generative media, and perception AI models are often engineered for single user interaction. We investigate ritual as a design scaffold for developing collaborative, multi-user human-AI engagement. We consider the specific case of an immersive staging of the musical Xanadu performed at UCLA in Spring 2025. During a two-week run, over five hundred audience members contributed sketches and jazzercise moves that vision language models translated to virtual scenery elements and from choreographic prompts. This paper discusses four facets of interaction-as-ritual within the show: audience input as offerings that AI transforms into components of the ritual; performers as ritual guides, demonstrating how to interact with technology and sorting audience members into cohorts; AI systems as instruments "played" by the humans, in which sensing, generative components, and stagecraft create systems that can be mastered over time; and reciprocity of interaction, in which the show's AI machinery guides human behavior as well as being guided by humans, completing a human-AI feedback loop that visibly reshapes the virtual world. Ritual served as a frame for integrating linear narrative, character identity, music and interaction. The production explored how AI systems can support group creativity and play, addressing a critical gap in prevailing single user AI design paradigms.