Nomination
What happens if artificial intelligences try to find an answer to one of the oldest mysteries of mankind? Combining data from (self-built) radio telescopes with various A.I. trained on human communication and aesthetics, a series of audiovisual performances and installations emerged, revolving around the ultimate question: Are we alone in the universe?
Using electromagnetic radio waves from the universe as input data for audio-based neural networks, the works create the utmost alien—a fusion of artificial intelligence and outer space. The various formats, with and without human performer, investigate different aspects of the same notions:
How do contemporary methods of data handling respond to these extraterrestrial frequencies?
Will neural networks recognize familiar elements in these archaic, foreign frequencies?
Can they find meaning within the noise of the universe?
The process of searching for significance, for patterns, and for rhythms is at the core of the works, in all its original uncensored A.I. beauty, with all its potential promises and flaws. Unfortunately the only reliable training data for intelligent communication systems stems from human civilizations…
Credits
For all works: In collaboration with Christian Losert
Coproduced by ZKM | Hertz-Lab
Fantasie#1: With Sebastian Müllauer
Thanks to Klaus Holzapfel for his Orgamat
Fantasie#2: Thanks to Ensemble Resonanz
Video: © Florian Schmuck – Ensemble Resonanz @ Resonanzraum
CREDO: With Sebastian Müllauer
Thanks to Marco Pasini and Daniel Boubet
Fantasie#3: Thanks to Marco Pasini
Video:
Sound Direction: Benjamin Miller – ZKM | Hertz-Lab
Camera, editing: Christina Zartmann – ZKM | Videostudio
Camera: Xenia Leidig
Performed and filmed at ZKM_Cube, December 9, 2020
Developed within the framework of the #bebeethoven scholarship program, a project of the PODIUM Esslingen on the occasion of the Beethoven Jubilee 2020, funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation.
Partially supported by a NEUSTART KULTUR scholarship for visual artists with children under the age of 7 from Stiftung Kunstfonds.
Quadrature (DE), a Berlin-based duo, understands technology as a means to read and write realities, with data as their main material. Various art and science collaborations have led the two members Juliane Götz and Sebastian Neitsch further and further into outer space, fusing the objective views of science with their very own subjective truth as artists. Their latest series of artworks was realized with Christian Losert, sound artist, composer, and creative technologist, and Sebastian Müllauer, a creator working at the intersection of design, art, technology, and nature.