Commissioned and performed by Crash Ensemble, with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland 2020

Smock Alley Theatre, New Music Dublin 2021

24 April 2021

Neural synthesis by Dadabots, AI video elements by James Kelleher

⁂

deep model A type of neural network containing multiple hidden layers.
model worker An exemplary, productive labourer. Also udarnik, shock worker, Stakhanovite etc. Common in Communist states.

DEEP MODEL WORKER is a radical journey through the underbelly of artificial intelligence, centring labour and the increasing augmentation of human life and art. In it:

~Crash Ensemble duet with their AI counterparts, birthed from a neural network trained on the CrashLands album. That record’s copyrighted original work by contemporary composers is reimagined here, not as direct samples, but entirely new audio produced by the neural network’s unsupervised deep learning.

~~AI-generated images of people that ‘do not exist’, authentic fake subjects, dream in hyperreality.

~~~Real-world characters working in tech, soon to be replaced entirely by AI, speak of their precarious role in the mode of production.

~~~~AI replacements for supermarket labour express sympathy with their dwindling human coworkers.

Deep Model Worker

To the memory, and in honour of Jonathan Philbin Bowman, who left this message on my answering machine in 1989, and around which I composed this music in 2010.

Coat-hanger Kisses

Georgimorphosis is an attempt to sonically mimic the effects of Escher's transformation prints. In pieces like Metamorphosis 1, Sky and Water and Verbum (Earth, Sky and Water), visual objects tessellate and seamlessly transform into others: fish into birds, birds into squares, people into houses. After composers like Adès, Kurtag and Finissy, who have notably used found objects 'quotations' in their own ways, I asked myself, would it be possible to use the methods of Reich and Donatoni to transform quotes by different composer Georges into each other?

Why Georges? Well the piece started life as a baroque flute piece written for Rosie Bowker but it kept getting out of control! When the piece was still for baroque flute, I looked closely at the Telemann Fantasias. Telemann's first name is Georg (Georg Philipp to be precise), and so materials transform banally between Telemann to Ligeti to Enescu to Haas to Benjamin to Gershwin to Handel (although not directly in that order). The point, if there is any, is whimsy.

It may also be evident that a couple of non-George-ian figures sit at the heart of this piece as well. The recurring harmonics trills and multiphonics refer to the sounds found in Sciarrino's Let me die before I wake (1982) and clearly I've learned from his Anamorfosi (1980). I felt the influence too of Robin Holloway, a mentor of mine who I am hugely grateful too, who's Gilded Goldbergs (1992 - 7) and Silvered Schubert (2013) do much more than I ever could. Thank you Robin, without your tutelage I would not compose now.

Thanks so much to Raymond Brien, the clarinettist in this recording! Raymond's put so much effort into this recording. He is gifted beyond words in musicality, technique, imagination and kindness! Sitting in his flat with a cup of tea working on these agonisingly small details must have been very tiresome for Ray, but for me the time was always incredibly heartening. Here's a link to Ray's soundcloud, he’s a composer too:

https://soundcloud.com/raymond-brien?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Thanks also to Professor Julian Anderson CBE and Malcolm Singer for your encouragement and advice, without which I'm not sure I'd ever have conceived of trying to do anything like this before.

The quotations:
Ligeti - 6 Bagatelles (1953)
Ligeti - Violin Concerto (1990, rev. 1992)
Benjamin - Into the Little Hill (1996)
Enescu - Symphony 5 (1941 - 46)
Haas - Finale (2004)
Telemann - Fantasia 2, 3 and 5  (1725 - 1733)
Handel - Messiah (1741)
Gershwin - Rhapsodie in Blue (1924)
Handel - Fireworks Music (1749)

Georgimorphosis - for solo Clarinet

Part one of this piece (embed upload, DEMO recording)

Man Gets Hits By Car Dies, Part 1

viola and singing - Caitlin Rowley
piano, ROLI Seaboard Block and singing - Edward Henderson
saxophone, piano and singing - Josh Spear
bass and singing - Timothy Cape

made for and with Bastard Assignments

recorded live at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo.

Will

clavinova study 19 05 20

Multiple Lanyards

Gooseworm/Wormgoose

Darragh Kelly is a composer and musician. He is interested in the ineluctable dialectics of the virtual vs the actual, subject vs object, the bathetic, the ecstatic, new music's ageing, and tonality's afterlife. Recent work makes use of AI, seeking to re-embody the output of neural networks and treat these systems as external organs of the body—a body in excess.​

Collaborators and performers have included Crash Ensemble, Heather Roche, The Smith Quartet, Darragh Morgan, Peter Brötzmann, Psappha Ensemble, Carla Rees, Michelle O'Rourke, and Elizabeth Hilliard. He received the 2018 West Cork Music Composition Prize for his work for string quartet, Blue, partly based upon the film by Derek Jarman. He is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre. In 2021, he received the Arts Council of Ireland Music Bursary, funding research and training in machine learning and a forthcoming collaboration with Irish composer and musician James McIlwrath. He has recently been awarded the Arts Council Next Generation Award for 2022, receiving €25,000 to support his work and research.

Darragh was a committee member for the Irish Composers' Collective for three years. He has studied at Trinity College Dublin and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.

Deep Model Worker

Darragh Kelly

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