»AAI« – Anarchic Artificial Intelligence – is a sonic meta narrative about an artificial intelligence growing, learning and speaking. Released as an album on Thrill Jockey in 2021, for Cyberia the work is reimagined in an installation format. Working with AI tech collective Birds on Mars and former Soundcloud programmers Ranny Keddo and Derrek Kindle, Mouse on Mars collaborated on the creation of software capable of modelling speech. What appears to be Louis Chude-Sokei narrating is in fact the AI speaking. Text and voice from Chude-Sokei and DJ/producer Yağmur Uçkunkaya were fed into the software as a model, allowing Mouse on Mars to control parameters like speed or mood to create a kind of speech instrument they could control and play as they would a synthesizer.
In Chude-Sokei’s text, as machine learning advances, robots begin to develop language, conscience, empathy; anarchic and unpredictable qualities. Drawing parallels between the evolution of human and machine, »AAI« uses technology as a lens to examine philosophical questions and to posit that we must embrace AI and technology as a collaborator to break out of our current cultural and moral stagnation, and to ensure our survival as a species. As Mouse on Mars’s Jan Werner explains: »We have to let AI develop qualities that we attach to humans, like empathy, imperfection, and distraction. Not to avoid machines becoming competitors who will do things faster or better, but because we’ll stay stuck in our selfishness, fear and xenophobia if we do not open up to those new concepts of life machines are able represent.«
The piece is accompanied by a visual language, shaped on computer generated stills by the inventor of the computer graphics language Processing, Casey Reas.
»AAI« will also be shown as an audio installation at the silent green Betonhalle venue in May 2021.
Andi Toma: Instruments, Electronics, Production
Jan St. Werner: Instruments, Electronics, Production
Dodo NKishi: Drums, Percussion
Louis Chude-Sokei: Text & Voice
Yagmur Uckunkaya: Voice
Tunde Alibaba: Percussion
Drumno: Drums, Percussion
Nicolas Gorges, Yagmur Uckunkaya, Florian Dohmann, Rany Keddo, Derek Tingle: AI programming
Jürg Andreas Meister, David Meyer: Unity programming & audiovisual design
Casey Reas: Computer Graphics
Rupert Smyth Studio: Art Direction
Written and produced at Paraverse Studios Berlin 2020