Last week was my first live performance with AI audio. I'm calling the piece Agency of Chaos, Unmoved.

… I experimented by combining these models together in new ways. If I feed the sound of Alan Watts through the model trained on his own voice, I get a slightly distorted version out. The distortion has an uncanny nature to my ears, less like analogue noise or digital glitch, and more like a skilful robotic imitator slipping up here and there. Next, I tried running the models simultaneously, and feeding the internal language encoded by one model into the decoder of a different model. The sound departs further. The dynamics and rhythm remain. The timbre is reminiscent but not quite there.

On Tuesday I’m giving a sound performance at the Cafe SAT in Montreal to close the (de)Stabilizing Diffusions exhibition. Usually when I’m working with performance, either I’m playing with others or creating an interactive system and directing others to perform with it. This will be my first solo sound performance in seven years. I’ve been a tad nervous.

An open-ended performance with real-time AI-generated audio. The computer music pioneer Joel Chadabe described performing with a non-deterministic system as like sailing a boat through stormy seas. A storm has its own agency of chaos, unmoved by whatever intentions I may have in harnessing its forces. In moments of desperation, it’s tempting to think that the storm is aware of our plight as it ushers or torments us.

World Without End is the next in my series of voyages from the micro to the macro inside the latent space of a generative GAN.

Do you remember four years ago when we first saw those AI generated photos of people’s faces and were told “this person does not exist”?

I remember the disorientation of that moment. It seemed incredible that an AI had acquired such a deep knowledge of the complexities of the human face, as well as the capability to render with photographic realism. When I was only confronted with the flawless images, it was easy to jump to that conclusion.

A couple of years ago I started trying to drive without using a satnav (or more precisely, Google Maps on my phone).

I’ve always been suspicion of satnavs. All they do is bark out orders. It seems harmless enough, but I suspect somewhere in my subconscious it’s reinforcing the narrative: ‘better do what this machine tells me to’. I can’t help but feel a step towards the subjugation of humans by machines. Perhaps people felt this way when they introduced traffic lights. Grumble grumble.

But my issue with the satnav was more practical. I noticed I wasn’t learning my way around when driving in the same way I did when walking or cycling.