I had a few hours to spare so I grabbed a table at a hotel downtown where I passed, far too easily, as a participant of the ongoing professional conference. The wifi required a room number and a corresponding name, but my phone worked fine as a modem. Quite suddenly, an hour and a half into my stint, myriad doors opened and the hallway was packed with actual conference participants, marked by shiny lanyards and purpose-built smiles. The chatter was like rainfall, like a rushing stream, like a flock of chatty birds — dense, rapid, and unintelligible. I recorded 45 seconds. This isn’t white noise (too slow) or brown noise (too shrill). It’s flesh noise. 

Humorously, both my laptop and my phone recognized the presence of human speech in the recording, and the Voice Memos app registered this with the little speech bubble icon, which signals that a transcription is available. I wondered what marvel might await, as I went to click on the button. Perhaps the processing power of my five-year-old laptop would be able to discern multiple individual streams of conversation from the tightly packed, overlapping speech. I was disappointed if not surprised. The transcription yielded merely “…..” — an extended ellipsis.

Flesh Noise

Marco Lucchi : pipe organ and synthesizers

*

2 ottobre 2024

*

"A gorgeous free-flowing piece by the prolific, broadly talented Marco Lucchi of Modena, Italy, combining pipe organ and synthesizers into a kind of insectoid raga. The track, five minutes or so long, is a whirring drone inside which cascades of organ notes, up and down the scale, pushing through for relative prominence. It tastes of Terry Riley in particular, and in a good way. There’s a remarkable amount of new music for organ being created currently, and this is a splendid addition — both the piece itself, and the combination of instruments."

Marc Weidenbaum

https://disquiet.com/2024/10/01/insectoid-raga/

Hymn for pipe organ and synthesizers

Cloud Streams

PLEASE FORGET (EVERYTHING) one hour installation soundtrack. 

San Francisco, CA — Heron Arts is pleased to announce an immersive solo exhibition by Charles Lindsay. As a speculative provocation the show asks: “Can AI become sentient? If AI can become sentient, can it become conscious? If AI can become conscious, can it become enlightened?”

PLEASE FORGET (EVERYTHING) features two strikingly bright yellow Japanese parking
kiosks, each situated in its own Zen garden—one in Kyoto and the other in San Francisco.
These modified devices, ubiquitous in Japan, are imagined as intelligent nodes within a vast
global AI network, much like mushrooms sprouting from intricate underground mycelial webs.
Each kiosk becomes a speculative symbol of sentient AI—networked, pranking and/or elevating humanity. Numerous other artworks in the exhibition expand upon these ideas.
The concept for this exhibition began with Charles Lindsay's proposal to NASA suggesting the
use of retired Mars Rovers to create Zen gardens on Mars. That idea evolved further when
Charles posed his question about AI and consciousness to the renowned Zen Buddhist monk,
Toryo Ito, at the onset of the pandemic. Captivated by the inquiry, Toryo invited Charles to
exhibit at Ryōsoku-in Zen Temple in Kyoto.

Drawing on the Zen Buddhist principle of ‘Beginner’s Mind,’ advocating for a process of
forgetting (and forgiving) to facilitate rapid transformation, Lindsay presents his new installations and assemblages as koans: those infamously paradoxical Zen Buddhist riddles designed to circumvent logical reasoning—in preparation for sudden enlightenment.

Alongside his sculptural techniques, Lindsay integrates a wide range of tools and materials to
produce poetic video and creative works that further explore his thematic concepts. Utilizing
OpenAI tools including Sora, a text-to-video model that is currently in research, Voice Engine,
and a custom GPT, he creates AI-driven works that challenge viewers' perceptions, urging them to explore the deeper mysteries presented. These works, much like the accompanying koans, are designed to inspire contemplation and open new avenues of understanding.

This one hour sound track fuses field recordings from Japan with the artist's stream of consciousness approach to playing a rare 1912 koto, shakuhachi acquired in Koto's flea markets, found percussion ie. fisherman's floats and flotsam, along with a fine and highly resonant Boesendorfer 185 CS piano (at Heron Arts.) Field recordings include the persistent 'do not forget anything' messages delivered by synthesized voices in all manner of public transportation in Japan. 

Please put on your eye shades and head phones and take a trip with me. Thanks for listening. 

Juntan - Andra Perspektiv

Juntan

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