In 2019 I began working on recreating an artificial intelligence lie detector which was employed at the European Union borders at that time. This algorithm scanned migrants faces for the so-called “biomarkers of deceit” – facial micro-expressions that purportedly could reveal whether one is being truthful of deceitful about their intent or background. Planning to hack this system, I trained my own algorithm to act as a synthetic voice that would respond to the deviations of truth and lie. To teach this algorithm how to “sing”, I had to make my own data-set – an extensive library of vocal events that could be used to train the neural network to output a responsive synthetic vocalise. 

Synthetic Exercises is based on the training materials, errors, glitches, and tests that went into making of that algorithm. In a sense, it documents the birth of a synthetic vocal algorithm. As the system was analyzing the vocal samples I fed it, it produced a library of its own – artefacts of noise, vocal errors, and sonic byproducts. Synthetic Exercises is an arrangement of some of these sonic events, mixed with the original data-training materials, and the inner workings of an algorithm exercising speech without words.

Synthetic Exercises

Synthetic Exercises is a sound work based on the by-products of a vocal algorithm learning to do its task. The piece is an arrangement of artificial sonic events and the inner workings of an algorithm exercising an abstract speech without words.

Synthetic Exercises (part 1)

"One starts by merely imagining real things.
Eventually, the real things themselves manifest." - G.I.G.

Kayīb

Kayīb

Andrius Arutiunian’s debut album »Seven Common Ways of Disappearing« was first conceived as an installation for the Armenia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2022. The Armenian-Lithuanian artist and composer uses hybrid forms of music, focusing on sonic vernaculars, hypnotic musical forms, and aural cosmologies. Arutiunian is known to work with installations, sound objects, and time-based collaborations with ensembles and performers. The piece on this record was written for two musicians, a retuned piano and analogue electronics, and it borrows an enneagram as its score—the world-ordering model introduced by the controversial Armenian-Greek mystic and composer G.I. Gurdjieff. The result is an album that is both aesthetically and spiritually intoxicating—music of the spheres, at once reminiscent of the masterpieces of minimal music and improvised, if not stochastic music.

G.I. Gurdjieff was one of the first thinkers and (quite possibly charlatans) to introduce a syncretic idea of Eastern philosophy into the West. His unique way of teaching was based on an esoteric blend of Middle Eastern, Buddhist, and Dervish philosophies, and oscillated between a genuine search for enlightenment and a complex form of trickery. Borrowing from Gurdjieff’s writing on the world ordering and musical tuning, Arutiunian used the enneagram to organise the musical and structural matter of the piece that was originally conceived as a live performance.

»Seven Common Ways of Disappearing« is written for a grand piano—the epitome of Western composition and musical production—and follows a simple set of rules: the two musicians have to navigate the topography of the score, rendering the piece in a different configuration each time. In a sense, this gripping recording is thus only one of the potentially infinite versions of how it could be played, but also seems to take on different shapes and forms with each new listen. It documents a truly mystical composition that follows its own logic. 

credits
released by Hallow Ground on June 9, 2023

Mastered by Andreas LUPO Lubich
Piano and electronics by Andrius Arutiunian

Seven Common Ways of Disappearing_(LP @ Hallow Ground, 2023)

Seven Common Ways of Disappearing

Performed by Keiko Shichijo, Elena Basilova and Andrius Arutiunian.
Commissioned by Rewire Festival
Recorded live at Korzo theatre The Hague, 2021

Seven Common Ways of Disappearing (live @ Rewire Festival)

Infinity is a 33-minute-long score written by Andrius Arutiunian as part of a performance by artist Naglis Kristijonas Zakaras. 

The piece is based on the natural beatings that occur as artefacts of closely correlating instrumental voices. Stretched out and delayed harmonic resolutions and seemingly static textures were used to create a slowly evolving, lush sound.

The performance took place as a part of SPUT exhibition at The Gardens in Vilnius, curated by Gerda Paliušytė, performed by Ensemble Synaesthesis, 2013.

Infinity(part I, live @ The Gardens, Vilnius)

Do Not Fear, Then! is a work for four voices, based on Armenian incantations and spells. The piece sources ancient spells from the felt-beaters of the city of Moks, recorded through the secret language of Ruštuni. 

Felt has always been seen as one of the most durable, cheapest, and warmest materials available, “a plebeian product and a symbol of barbarism, poverty, and contempt”. The felt-beaters were therefore considered as one of the lowest subclasses of professions, occupying a social niche close to that of thieves or tricksters.

As travelling sellers though, they developed a secret language of their own – a Ruštuni argot – to protect and conceal the secrets of their trade. This argot and its glossary was recorded in the 19th century, ciphered together with the spells and incantations that originate from the underworld imaginaries of the felt-beaters. These spells are a codified attempt to conjure the supernatural, avert bad luck, and deflect misfortune through apotropaic magic. In their raw states incantations bridge a gap between speculative futures and flexible realities. A common ending of Ruštuni spell is the enigmatic phrase do not fear, then!, which is used as the title of the piece.

Four singers were invited to improvise the vocals using the Ruštuni incantations in their original secret form. Following the recording sessions, Arutiunian turned this material into a slowly unfolding large-scale sound work. All the sounds were generated using only the original voice recordings. Arutiunian placed the four voices in constant motion, slowly oscillating between dissonance and attunement, while transforming them into a variety of textures and instruments. Using diaphony and interference patterns, the work unfolds as a hypnotic study of voice, tension and apotropaic magic.

The work was co-commissioned by CTM Berlin Radio Lab, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, and Centrala Space Birmingham, with financial support of Fonds Podiumkunsten. It was recorded in collaboration with Melos New Vocal Music Collective. Do Not Fear, Then! was first shown at silent green Kulturquartier Berlin, with its subsequent inclusion in Arutiunian’s solo show Gharīb at the Armenian Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale.

Do Not Fear, Then! (excerpt)

Armen is an installation and a limited-edition lathe LP release made using sound and video materials produced by the Armenian diaspora musicians. Due to the Armenian Genocide, Armenia has one of the largest diaspora in the world, spread across various continents. I chose to work with a selection of tapes and vinyls from the 1970s and 80s made by Armenian diaspora producers, same generation as my father, an Armenian émigré himself. This material, which I collected throughout several years, shares a certain sense of nostalgia and often uses and reshapes elements of traditional Armenian music.

ARMEN was first shown at the Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius (2017), Rast Theatre Amsterdam (2018), as well as broadcast by Radio Papesse Süden Radio, and documenta 14 SAVVY FUNK.

Armen

Armen (LP, excerpt)

ARMEN is an audio-visual installation and a vinyl release composed using found audio materials which were produced or released by Armenian producers living abroad. Armenia has one of the largest diaspora in the world, spread across various continents. I chose to work with a selection of tracks from the 1970s and 80s made by Armenian diaspora producers, same generation as my father, who was an Armenian emigré himself. All of the selected tracks share a certain sense of nostalgia as well as use certain elements of traditional Armenian music. I reproduce their sounds and structures which create this “southern” feeling while exposing it to noises and glitchy textures reconstructing their narratives anew.

ARMEN was shown at the Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius (2017), RAST Theatre Amsterdam (2018), as well as broadcast by Radio Papesse Süden Radio & documenta 14 SAVVY FUNK.

ARMEN (excerpt 3)

Live recording by ensemble Synaesthesis @ MO Museum, Vilnius, 2019.

The 45-minute-long work “Atomic B” for ensemble, live electronics and multi-screen video is based on Lithuanian town Visaginas. The town was built in 1975 as part of a newly-constructed atomic power plant complex and was intended to host its engineers, scientists and military personnel. Together with a few other atomic towns in the USSR, Visaginas was planned in the shape of a butterfly – four reactors of the power plant would be represented by four sectors or “wings” of the town. Each of these sectors were supposed to house atomic power plant workers, most of whom were brought from other parts of the USSR.

The piece uses archival audio-visual footage from 1970’s showing the construction of the power plant and the town, and the daily life of Visaginas and its inhabitants. This footage is mainly taken from propaganda films about Visaginas which had a strong political agenda to present the effects of urbanization and industrialization in a positive light. The images are reconstructed and recomposed, exposing their visual qualities and focusing on the camera movement as well as peripheral details and shots. This decentring of the images underlines and deconstructs the messages visually encoded into them.

This material is then sampled and triggered live, forming a counterpoint with the instrumental parts. Each instrumentalist has her/his own autonomous harmonic and rhythmic enclaves which often come together - harmonies dissolve into one another with the musicians tracing the speed and directions of the visual projection. The intention was to create a space in which ideas of belonging, identity and reimagining futures can all coexist within one musical language but in many musical speeches.

Made possible with the support of Fonds Podiumkunsten and Lithuanian Council for Culture

Atomic B - Part 3 (live by Ensemble Synaesthesis)

Four Essays is a collaborative online publication initiated by Andrius Arutiunian. With contributions by Raimundas Malašauskas, Marianna Maruyama, and Isabelle Sully, it documents four contemporary scenarios drawn together by their attention to sound, fluidity, surveillance, and virology. Four Essays is a non-linear publication, with multiple endings and several beginnings, and it was organised as a polyphonous experiment between text, image, and sound.

Each of the essays has a dedicated sonic counterpart composed by Andrius Arutiunian. These tracks share one sound source — an 8 hour-long field recording of a small beach gathering that ran late into the night on the 21st of May 2020, somewhere on the coast of south-east France. Just as the weather began to warm and the first lockdown of the pandemic slowly eased, the participants of this party danced, drank, played, and told various stories all throughout the night. This nightly field recording became a musical refrain of the Four Essays – it echoes and reappears throughout the different parts of the music. The electronic sounds were slowly merging with the field recordings, diffusing and obscuring it, as a musical interplay between each of the essays.

Andrius Arutiunian

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