On the 24th November 2022, SensiLab premiered thirteen new works at the intersection of art, technology and creativity. Here’s a summary of some of the works presented.
New research projects at the intersection of art, technology and creativity.
Transhuman Ansambl is a live performance and interactive sound installation by artist and PhD researcher Lucija Ivšić. The work consists of 16 autonomous “singers” – bespoke speaker systems with built-in sensors, electronics and LED displays. The singers are arranged in a circle. creating a place for gathering, surrounding the audience and immersing them in sound and light. Each singer uses the artist’s voice, manipulated by generative software that allows them to define their own emergent ‘personality’. This personality is revealed through interactions with the audience, other singers and the artist’s voice. Drawing on the traditional Croatian cultural practices of women’s vocal chanting within a ring, Transhuman Ansambl creates a transcendent experience of voice, place and human-machine interaction.
With sound installation and supervision by Jon McCormack. Hardware design by Elliott Wilson.
Dr. Nina Rajcic‘s This is not your breaking point is a AI machine writing installation. Using machine generated poetry and an AI system trained on human handwriting, the writing machine writes a series of aphorisms on an endless scroll of paper, the handwriting shifting between legibility and asemic writing.
cosiness::cosinus is a hand made quilt with computer-generated patterns embroidered on each of its 25 panels. The work is a collaboration between Dr Monika Schwarz and Professor Jon McCormack. Monika designed and crafted the quilt, including the machine embroidery. The patterns were created using generative software developed by Jon as part of a research project looking at Quality-Diversity methods for generative design.
Sam Trolland‘s Undulations is an interactive video installation comprising two turntables. Each turntable has a record with the labels “nature” and “nurture”. By placing the turntable needle on a specific location on each record, the audience controls the mixing of two different video streams in real time.
Interpretations by Meng Yang and Dr Maria Teresa Llano presented a new AI system that listens to piano music played on a keyboard and responds with a text interpretation based on the music played. Using a GPT network fine tuned on user comments on music found on YouTube, the system tried to interpret the musical qualities of what is being played and responds with emotive and poetic reflections.
Jon McCormack’s Dream Machines re-created Brion Gysin’s machine for inducing altered states of consciousness and hallucination through flashing light. A specially composed electronic soundscape accompanied the work, designed to enhance the experience and elicit machine-induced hallucinations. Alongside the machine was a personal version that uses goggles worn over the head. A small attached device controls rate, colour, pattern and brightness of the light. The work is part of an on-going project to investigate different states of consciousness on human creativity.