Fragments: Poetics of Otherness is an audiovisual performance for human performers and autonomous computer processes generating together a poetic experience. The work reflects on how data processing Artificial Intelligence systems anonymize and aestheticize human conflicts.
In tandem, humans and algorithms collaborate to reveal the poetics lying at the intersection of the social and the technological. The performance creates an immersive journey guided by the alien behaviour of computer based artificial forms of intelligence. A set of Markov chains, Spiking Neural Networks, Machine Learning and optical flow algorithms autonomously self-organize to modulate the audio and video content curated by the human performers. As Fragments: Poetics of Otherness unfolds, small media fragments are transformed and reconfigured to explore the aesthetic of algorithmic behaviour and how humans can make sense in an increasingly AI driven world. With this performance, Marc-André Cossette y Alexandre Saunier invite the public to witness the poetics emerging from a real time human-machine dance of agency.
Fragments is an ongoing series of audiovisual works that bring together multiple Montreal-based, but nationally-diverse, collaborators in the fields of generative music, lighting design, audiovisual production, graphic design, and research-creation. Together they explore the complex feelings of living in an algorithm-driven world, living away from their homelands, sharing across cultural differences, and sustaining social lives across borders. As part of this series, Fragments: Poetics of Otherness is an original creation led by Alexandre Saunier & Marc-André Cossette.
Collaborator:
Marc-André Cossette
Presentations:
Festival de la Imagen 2021
Ars Electronica 2021 (Hexagram garden)
Visuals:
Unreal Engine 4.26, photogrammetry
Audio:
Markov chains, Max4Live, Ableton Live, drum machine, synthesizers
