Humanizing the machine self: open sound performance hacklab
Idea and direction: Peter Kirn*

What if we used artificial intelligence to bring in more humanity and bring our own expression to the forefront instead of making it a side issue? In this lab, we will explore some ways we can use AI to connect music performance with gesture and expression and go beyond the solo screen and collaborate with each other.

We will learn some ways AI tools can be used to learn gestures and track body and facial movements. Then we will apply these to live music and visual performances that support jamming, collaboration, and human-to-human exchange using a creative code environment.

We will focus on making the digitized self our own, deconstructing the normative and corporate dominated avatars of the digital world in favor of our own imagined punk ethos.

BLAUES RAUSCHEN invites you to an open, collaborative hacklab on this topic.

Who can participate?

– musicians, vocalists

– dancers

– puppeteers

– constructors

– coders

– video artists

Interested parties are invited who want to use their individual knowledge and approaches to explore experimental performative moments in comparison with like-minded people. The results will be presented to the festival audience in a collaborative performance at the end.

Schedule:

– Submission deadline: 04/24/2023.

– Announcement of the participants: 05.05.2023

– Hacklab days: 14 – 17.06.2023

– Final performance: 17.06.2023

– Location: Folkwang Music School Essen, Thea-Leymann-Strasse 23, 45127 Essen

Day 1: get together / gear check

Day 2: learning workshop

Day 3: play

Day 4: run-through and public live performance

Info for participants

For this hacklab, we welcome people from the Ruhr Area and beyond.

In the application form below, we ask for a little more information about you. What’s important to us is to learn how you’d work with other people – not just to present work you’ve made before – and how you can play together.

10 participants will be selected from the open call.

Please note – we cannot provide an artist fee; this is just an open shared environment. We can provide what we think will be a great experience, a shared communal performance outcome, and access to BLAUES RAUSCHEN 2023 Festival events.

Affordable accomodation can be found here: https://ruhrtropolis-hostel.com/

PETER KIRN* is a composer and media artist, with releases on Detroit Underground, Industrial Complexx, Wunderblock Records, Kotä Records, TRAPEZ, and his own Establishment. His site CDM.link has been a daily source for many looking to the bleeding edge of electronic music and mixed media technology, culture, and technological politics. He is also co-creator of the MeeBlip hardware synthesizer line, is a sought-after adviser and communicator in new technologies, and has worked on collaborative laboratories and talks with TED, European Space Agency, Sonar+D, MUTEK, and others. His MusicMakers Hacklab with CTM Festival has evolved into a wild alternative performance laboratory since its debut in 2013. He has made music for kinky parties and grimy underground club events, raunchy noise music, and passionate and ever-changing experimental expression, rooted in training in composition in New York with his teacher Tania Leon.