Synthesis 1

Portrait XO – »The Cost of Connection«

21:30

Rick Farin & Actual Objects – »Chaos Play Live«

22:30

Ticketing closed

»The Cost of Connection« is a live audiovisual performance by Portrait XO featuring cellist and coder Dan Gorelick that explores global challenges using AI and data sonification. Drawing on critical datasets from the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), she transforms data into sound and visuals to engage audiences with the complex issues facing our world. Her work began with sonifying a century of global temperature anomalies to highlight patterns and spikes in the data, drawing parallels with the rapid growth of AI. Building on this, her latest research investigates the relationships between datasets, seeking to uncover where healthier interdependence can be achieved. Through a combination of sound, visuals, and real-world data, the performance with Gorelick translates historical trends and future projections encouraging public discourse to consider our role in shaping a sustainable future.

Rooted in the use of game engines and digital design tools, Rick Farin’s practice delves into speculative fictions that exaggerate the present to craft provocative visions of the future. Together with his partner Claire, he co-founded Actual Objects, a creative studio blending live action, CG, AI, and VFX to construct radical narratives for artists and musicians, including but not limited to, Travis Scott, Kali Uchis, Yves Tumor, Charli XCX, Caroline Polachek, and Bad Bunny. In their AV-performance »Chaos Play Live,« original music by Farin is »performed« by a seemingly endless cast of digital characters, both CGI & AI generated, that take audiences into nether zones where human expression and machine artefact meld insolubly into each other to herald a new chaotic era in which fabrication and reality will be inseparable.

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Presented with transmediale.