It’s almost 6:30 pm on a warm summer evening in Istanbul. There’s yet another couple of hours before the sun will set. Young people between the ages of 25 to 45 are gathering at a leisurely pace in a small park in Kosuyolu on the Asian side, called Manolya Park. This is where their unusual adventure will begin.

They are here for Remote Istanbul, “a theatrical audiovisual journey in the streets of Istanbul,” as the Beykoz Kundura website promises. The excitement is palpable as participants put on their over-ear headphones and clip a small voice command box on their clothes.

In the next two hours, they will walk, run -briefly-, go down stairs, up and down escalators, gaze at the sky, check out traffic, check out parked cars in a garage, dance in a public square, and become both the audience and the spectacle itself in turns, sometimes attracting suspicious looks.

This is not your usual guided tour of Istanbul that drones on with comments about historical monuments to your left and your right. This is a guided tour aided by Rachel (Ipek in the Turkish version), a disembodied female AI voice, and later by Peter (Murat in the Turkish version), a disembodied male AI voice.

Elif Bereketli, 35, a journalist, says she will probably remember some of the things that were said during the audiovisual performance, while Asena Dogan, 31, a lawyer, says she had higher expectations. “I believe the performance made me more aware of city life,” Bereketli says, telling TRT World she was quite happy to be a part of the “horde,” as the AI programme calls the group.

Can Buyukkalkan, 30, a photographer, says as he was walking in the front, he liked the reassurance that he was being followed by the horde, for example when crossing the street en masse. Bereketli says it makes you think about artificial intelligence: “Who am I talking to? How much am I being led by AI? How pliable am I? To have a body in the city.”

Bereketli goes on to say that the flash mob-like dance in Kadikoy Square made her think about the odd looks she was getting as a performer, the feeling of dancing, as well as the AI reminding her she (Rachel) does not have a body, and thus “it was a multi-layered experience.”

Dogan says she enjoyed the AI switching genders towards the end, from Rachel to Peter, but that she felt the change should have happened earlier. Buyukkalkan notes that just as the horde was becoming a singular entity, which came late as the horde members did not speak with each other or communicate in other ways, it was broken up by the AI on purpose, which was intriguing.

The Remote X project began in 2013, Buse Yildirim, the Culture and Arts Director of Beykoz Kundura, tells TRT World. It has now spread to about 54 cities in the world. “Rimini Protokoll, one of the foremost collectives in documentary theatre, based in Berlin, it’s their work. Stefan Kaegi is responsible for the concept, script and direction. Jörg Karrenbauer is responsible for the script and direction on location.”

Yildirim says the experience questions the relationship we have with technology, with the city, as if we were in a film, asks us to view the world we live in through different eyes, “as if we are above clouds,” Yildirim says, “as it says in the text you listen to.”

“We have taken over the Istanbul adaptation as Kundura Sahne,” she adds, “in order to refresh our relations with Istanbul, and to question our relations with artificial intelligence (AI).”

Yildirim notes that the creation process of Remote Istanbul was challenging, that she and the German team of producers ended up walking for kilometres in a week and trying to find a suitable path for participants, going through options that even she did not know as a resident. Then they got permission from local authorities.

“As Shakespeare said, ‘All the world's a stage,’' Yildirim notes. “You become even more aware of it during the tour, as you walk through the city.” She says even small business owners get used to the group walking in their neighbourhood, as well as strangers casting strange looks at “the horde.”

Yildirim says participants should surrender to the game that they are a part of. “The text,” she says, “talks about daily life, and has some lovely layers to it. It makes you think.” She gives an example of navigation apps: “Even when we know the way, we still consult them to find out how long it will take us to get there,” she points out. “This performance makes you question how much we should rely on and surrender to artificial intelligence.”

“We are often asked ‘Where are you next week?’ [by participants],” Yildirim says. “Although we would love to extend the Remote Istanbul project to multiple locations, there is a great deal of production behind the event and it requires a lot of preparation.”

“AI is steeped deep in our lives without us noticing,” Yildirim explains, adding that she is speaking not as a technology expert but as an end user. “We lead a life determined by algorithms, it has gone beyond AI making our lives easier. I am curious as to how it will evolve and turn into something else.”

Asked about how she feels about Rachel and Peter, the artificial intelligence voices leading the tour, Yildirim says she has heard that female voices are more popular for navigation devices. “I believe they give us reassurance, making us trust them and surrender to them.”

She feels that Peter is a guest in the game while Rachel is the host. “That said, you can feel that Peter has a masculine, patriarchal energy,” she laughs, “as he says ‘Forget about what Rachel has shown you and asked you to do, I will show you different things. He can come across as haughty.”

Please note that the tours are in Turkish. They will be held in English on two Sundays: August 15th and 29. For more information, contact Beykoz Kundura at (216) 323 31 30.