Ars Electronica Garden Espoo / Helsinki

Uncertainty with AI-terity (Music Performance)

Koray Tahiroğlu (FI/TR)

The composition Uncertainty keeps the musician in a hesitant state of performance, providing a non-rigid but identifiable musical events, followed by ever shifting new sounds. Uncertainty is a composition written for the AI- terity instrument that comprises computational features of a particular artificial intelligence (AI) model to generate relevant audio samples for real- time audio synthesis. The unusual behaviour of the Al-terity puts the performer in an uncertain state during performance. Together with being able to move through timbre-changes in sonic space, the emergence of new sounds allows the musician to explore a whole new range of musical possibilities. Composition turns into a continuous state of playing, reformulating an idiomatic relationship with the Al-terity and opening up a fresh variety of musical demands.

Uncertain practices: Live Discussion

Koray Tahiroğlu (FI/TR), Laura Beloff (FI), Andy Best (FI/UK)

Uncertain practices presents three artists within the framework of uncertainty. After studio visits, talks and a musical performance, join in on a live session with the artists Koray Tahiroğlu, Laura Beloff and Andy Best for a further dialogue on their practices.

Imagining Godzilla

Andy Best (FI/UK)

The sea is a place of uncertainty. It is never still, always sighing even on the calmest of still summer nights. The Baltic is the second largest inland sea in the world, composed mainly of brackish water, a mix of saline inflow from the Atlantic together with fresh water run-off from its huge catchment area, which is four times the size of the sea itself. Today, the Baltic is one of the most polluted seas in the world. The continual flow of commercial shipping bringing raw materials, food and retail goods to ports around it leaves trails of pollution in its wake. The run-off of agricultural fertilizers, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, via rivers on the coast, have led to eutrophication and the growth of massive algae blooms that are a feature of both the coastlines and open sea regions. Many factors, local and global alike, affect the continuing ecological catastrophe facing the Baltic.

Liquid Matter

Laura Beloff (FI)

The boundary between wet and dry is blurring. Similarly, our expectations towards solid or soft objects and machines are being redefined. These developments are impacted by many different factors, from developments in biotechnology and life science to innovation in new materials and their behavior, among various other areas. Also, in the humanities and the arts, there has been a recent surge of interest towards material agencies and processes that are based on inorganic or biological matter and executed by non-human organisms. It could be said the realms of technology and biology – that is, the biologically grown and the artificially constructed – converge in liquid matter. This can be seen when looking into the methods and practices of biology, biotechnology and biochemistry, which involve technological tools and approaches to investigate biological organisms and create chemistry-based experiments, all of which typically take place in wet environments.

Uncertainty with AI-terity

Koray Tahiroğlu (FI/TR)

The composition Uncertainty keeps the musician in a hesitant state of performance, providing a non-rigid but identifiable musical events, followed by ever shifting new sounds. Uncertainty is a composition written for the AI- terity instrument that comprises computational features of a particular artificial intelligence (AI) model to generate relevant audio samples for real- time audio synthesis. The unusual behaviour of the Al-terity puts the performer in an uncertain state during performance. Together with being able to move through timbre-changes in sonic space, the emergence of new sounds allows the musician to explore a whole new range of musical possibilities. Composition turns into a continuous state of playing, reformulating an idiomatic relationship with the Al-terity and opening up a fresh variety of musical demands.

remote/displaced

Äänen Lumo (FI), Aalto University (FI), quietSpeaker (FI)

remote/displaced allows for an immersive exploration of a virtualized physical space: Öljysäiliö 468,  a vast, decommissioned oil tank in East Helsinki. It takes the shape of a small collection of brief immersive audio-visual visits to this special remote place, exploring ways to listen to the encounter between sound, technology, space and landscape, as it emerges like a precarious ecosystem, where the boundaries between natural and artificial are constantly renegotiated and deformed by technology.

Chronicles of an Art and Science Collaboration, Otaniemi-Espoo, Finland

Aalto University (FI)

The project highlights the use of autoethnographic narrative as tool for artistic and design research. It brings together self-reflections from three scientists who participated in an art and science collaboration dealing with the use of bio-cellulose for art and design purposes. Through their stories we learn about what inspired them to follow careers in science and how the making of a contribution to sustainability and the good of humankind sustains their work objectives.

Uncertain Practices

Aalto University (FI)

Uncertainty requies that one be able to cope with doubt, something that 2020 took to unusual lengths. uncertainty is also the basis for experimental art practices. The Aalto Garden presents three artists ―Koray Tahiroğlu, Laura Beloff and Andy Best― working through AI, music, artificial biology and an art-science network platform through studio visits, talks and a performance. The Aalto Garden events are produced by Aalto Studios at Aalto University.