2024 Festival Angewandte, Vienna (AT)
2026 Vanishing Acts, Valetta (MLT)
together with Zeynep Aksöz, Alexander Urban, Lea Karnutsch
photos: Kathrin Stumreich
This project reinterprets dialogue from a posthuman perspective and explores interactions beyond anthropocentric paradigms. Autonomous beings, crafted from curved sheets of steel and equipped with AI, engage in dynamic, non-anthropocentric conversations and shape their soundscape through the intrinsic properties of their materials. Their ‘voices’ are produced by resonant vibrations within their hollow steel forms, which are activated by piezo elements and transducers. Much like human voices, which arise from internal vibrations, these entities generate unique frequencies that contribute to immersive soundscapes.
Each modular configuration generates specific spatial and sonic characteristics. Microphone-speaker feedback loops emphasise resonant areas and enable the entities to ‘communicate’ with their surroundings. AI dynamically modulates these patterns, thereby fostering emergent, non-linear communication. The soundscapes evolve fluidly, creating glitchy, fluid and undefined spaces for interaction that invite the audience to experience the dialogue as an interwoven, emergent phenomenon.
Inspired by Donna Haraway’s concept of the Terrapolis – a polytemporal chimera of materials, languages and stories – the beings embody an ethos of interconnection. Their voices, shaped by internal movements and AI control, transcend traditional boundaries to promote speculative sustainability and coexistence. The audience is invited to explore post-human storytelling through soundscapes, thereby fostering collective understanding and shared exploration within shared spaces.
This project is a live performance in which AI and human composers collaborate through dynamic, non-anthropocentric dialogues, utilising resonant steel beings as interfaces for sound and interaction. These autonomous beings generate unique soundscapes by blending material vibrations with AI-controlled modulation, thereby offering a speculative exploration of collective creativity and post-human communication.
binaural audio recording (use headphones) of the concert in Valletta in 2026