Other Worlds

Barbican centre, London, 2018

Created for London Contemporary Orchestra’s October 2018 concert in collaboration with Artrendex and Universal Assembly Unit, Other Worlds is a landmark fusion of artificial intelligence generated visuals and orchestral music. The neural network was trained on images of oceans, storms, cave networks, and lava flows, then, in live reaction to the orchestral sound, generated new unique imagery to accompany the performances of Uaxuctum by Giacinto Scelsi and Become Ocean by John Luther Adams.

Music by London Contemporary Orchestra, AI by Artrendex, Art Direction by Universal Assembly Unit, Music to AI control by Ben Heim

 
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At London's Barbican Hall, sound and vision ushered in the End Times
At London's Barbican Hall, sound and vision ushered in the End Times

So I hope it takes nothing away from the LCO’s brave and accomplished playing to say that the visual component was the evening’s greatest triumph. The dream of “colour music” has ended in bathos and silliness for so many brilliant and ambitious musicians. Now, with the judicious application of some basic neural networking, we may at last be on the brink of fusing tone and colour into an art that’s genuinely new, and undeniably beautiful.

By Simon Ings, New Scientist