Robot Voices and Talking Machines: From Alphaville to Her

Saturday, Apr. 18 2026, 4:00

Before machines could talk in fact, they were already talking in fiction – on stage and in films. These dreams of talking machines not only preceded the real technologies they foresaw, like Siri and Alexa; they also shaped and constrained the technology as it developed. Performance historian Christopher Grobe and sound studies scholar Marit MacArthur will talk about their work on the cultural history of “robot voice,” a vocal cliché in film that has shaped real technology, including recent AI-driven voice agents. This talk is linked to screenings of two films central to that history. Alphaville (1965), directed by Jean-Luc Godard, features a talking computer considerably less charming than Samantha, the talking computer played by Scarlett Johansson in Her (2013). The former imagines an authoritarian society ruled by AI; the latter provided the model now mimicked by current AI voice technologies. About the Panelists:

• Christopher Grobe received his PhD in English from Yale University in 2011 and is now an Associate Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. His teaching and scholarship concern “performance” as both a mode of artistic practice and a source of social knowledge. Grobe has taught a wide array of courses on subjects ranging from contemporary and modern drama to podcasting, performance studies, apocalyptic theater, poetry performance, archival research, technology in the arts, and the practice of arts criticism. Before arriving at Johns Hopkins in 2024, he taught for thirteen years at Amherst College, where he also chaired the English department and directed the Center for Humanistic Inquiry.
• Marit MacArthur taught American literature, composition and creative writing at CSU Bakersfield for 15 years. Since 2017 she has taught full-time at UC Davis, including advanced composition, professional writing, proposals, and graduate-level writing. She is also a faculty affiliate in Performance Studies. Marit's research areas include AI and writing, digital voice studies, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC), collaborative & interdisciplinary research and writing, performance studies, cultural analytics and digital humanities, open-source software development, 20th century poetry and the Anglo-American poetic tradition.

Tickets: $11 (members), $16 (nonmembers)

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