Lecture About Myself

for two performers, quadrophonic sound, video and light

A fictional supercomputer gives a short lecture on the subject of artificial intelligence through the medium of text, image and sound. During its presentation, the protagonist confronts us with ideas that range from the benign to the provocative, in a manner that is both playful, convoluted and downright weird. Two musicians enter into a sort of transhumanist dialogue, communicating through a networked, machinic interface inspired by the concept of evolutionary linguistics and artist/scientist Luc Steels' AI robots who speak a language they themselves invented. The piece also draws on ideas from Golem XIV, a 1981 sci-fi novel by the Polish author Stanisław Lem, in which a supercomputer confronts humanity with various hard truths, not only about its future but also about its present. The retrofuturism of Lem’s book is collided into contemporary – and often antithetical - philosophies, via Donna Haraway and others, resulting in a cryptic mini-critique of the promise of homo sapiens’ salvation by artifiicial intelligence.

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Performance: reConvert
[Lorenzo Colombo & Roberto Maqueda]
Video: Carl-John Hoffmann
Dramaturgical collaboration: Thomas Fiedler
Text and composition: Kaj Duncan David

Commissioned by reConvert

With support from the Danish Arts Council, KODA Kultur, Musikfonds/BKM and the Studio for Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste Berlin

17.03.2022

Lecture About Myself

performed by reConvert

Sonic-a Festival, Glasgow

10.10.2021

Lecture About Myself

performed by reConvert

Pulsar Festival, Copenhagen

15.03.2020

Lecture About Myself - part II

version for video and 4ch sound only

Primavera en La Habana, Cuba

01.02.2020

Lecture About Myself

performed by reConvert

Akademie der Künste, Berlin

24.01.2020

Lecture About Myself

performed by reConvert

Kulturhaus Helferei, Zürich

20.01.2020

Lecture About Myself

performed by reConvert

WURM, Basel

29.09.2019

Lecture About Myself

performed by reConvert

Kontakte Festival,
Akademie der Künste, Berlin