Thinking Sound with Generative AI: A Creative Practice Workshop

How can sound and performance serve as critical and creative responses to the shifting languages, metaphors, and narrative forms emerging in the age of Generative AI? While visual media often dominate public and scholarly discourse about new technologies, this workshop emphasises the sonic and performative as equally vital frameworks for reimagining creative collaboration and critical inquiry. This workshop is hosted by the Literature Catalyst for the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, with special guest workshop leaders from the Orpheus Institute for advanced music research in Ghent (Belgium).

In the afternoon, from 12-4pm, Jonathan Impett and Juan Parra Cancino will present strategies developed both as part of their Three States of Wax project and within the larger framework of the Music, Thought, and Technology research group at the Orpheus Institute. Building on the work of the late philosopher of science Michel Serres, these strategies aim to structure improvisation by use of technologically informed tropes in an expanded informational environment. Jung In Jung (Abertay) and Lynda Clark (Edinburgh Futures Institute, University of Edinburgh) will consider how the concept of ‘hallucination’ in Generative AI can act as a creative tool, using their collaborative writing/sound work Traumgraz as a starting point. Finally, Johanna Linsley (Dundee) and Martin Zeillinger (Abertay) will facilitate a conversation with participants about how their own projects and research concerns can draw on the ideas and provocations explored in the workshop.

In the evening from 7-9pm, participants are invited to a public event, Wet Tech, where the workshop leaders will perform works that informed the afternoon session. Wet Tech takes place at the Chaplaincy on the University of Dundee campus.

This workshop is open to all PhD students based at a university in Scotland, whether or not you are funded by SGSAH, and travel costs up to £50 can be reimbursed. Please contact Dr Johanna Linsley at jlinsley001@dundee.ac.uk if you have questions about travel.

FURTHER DETAILS

Three States of Wax is a project of the ‘Music, Thought and Technology’ research group at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium (MTT).

The late philosopher of science Michel Serres drew many of his metaphors from music or from the natural world. In L’interférence (1972) he sought to identify the objects of study of modern science, and looked back to Descartes’ example of a piece of wax. Early modern science would have described it in terms of its shape, colour and texture, says Serres – geometrical description. In the later nineteenth and early twentieth century they would have referred to its properties of transmission of heat, of deformation and transformation – physical description. Now, he says, we would more appropriately find an informational description. We should understand it as a carrier and embodiment of knowledge: the feeding habits of the bees, the conditions of its formation, the process of its separation, the entire history of its subsequent use, handling, and environments. And in doing so, we add to that history; every interrogation and knowledge-use becomes part of the material.

Three States of Wax considers improvisation in that light: how can the human and computational responses to material generated in improvisation be based not only on figural or gestural interpretations, but on an understanding of that material as embodying a broader history and environment of its emergence? In Serres’ terms, as the product of a time-based, situated modulation or interference pattern of heterogeneous sources of information?

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Traumgraz is part of a wider exploration of ‘Creativity Amplification’ which involves using emerging technologies to inspire and support creative writing. A collaboration between writer Lynda Clarke and sound artist Jung In Jung (current Styrian Artist in Residence in Graz, Austria), Traumgraz aims to foreground AI ‘hallucination’ through the creation of an interactive fantasy travel guide to Graz. The project makes use of photos taken in and around Graz, digitally altered with the AI image generator Wombo Dream AI, and combines them with human-authored text inspired by conversations about Graz with Google's Bard AI. These conversations also informed the prompts used to alter the images. The interactive 'tour' is performed live with sound generated from recordings taken around Graz and from image-to-sound FX AI programmes.