EXBERLINER Issue 170, April 2018

WHAT’S ON — Music
Interview
“Disaster porn is too easy”
Holly Herndon and Mathew Dryhurst on their
immersive contribution to the ISM Hexadome,
on this month at Martin-Gropius-Bau. By Michael Hoh
that don’t confront these politics is
often helping them. The dystopian
science fiction industry is one of the
tools of the dystopian future. You’re
inundated with creepy, uncanny valley
characterisations of the future of AI.
You get way more clicks on an article
where you’re like, “Whoa, look at this
new face substitution technique that
could be used to deceive the public.”
Disaster porn is too easy.
How do you know when you cross
a boundary? HH: It’s not like there’s
just one boundary. You’re constantly
crossing them and going back and
forth and having to make those
decisions in realtime. That’s what’s
interesting about it. And, of course,
we’re criticised for messing with
these topics. MD: Our interests are
on a very humble level. Why can’t we
develop AI systems to manifest these
ideals that we have, and are we losing
ground in not setting that as our
ambition? This Promethean impulse
is something, of course, to treat sensitively
and be self-critical about, but I
don’t think it invalidates the mission.
DON’T MISS
The Space Lady
If you haven’t heard
the San Franciscobased
Space Lady’s
Casio renditions of
contemporary pop
songs yet, make
sure to head to this
month’s Kiezsalon
at Musikbrauerei.
Apr 18, 20:30
Amiina plays Fantômas
The Icelandic band
will perform their
2016 album, an
imagined score to
the eponymous 1913
crime film, in full
at Radialsystem V.
Apr 23, 20:00
Berlintouch no.3
Combining influences
from Lebanon,
Turkey and Germany,
Bernadette
La Hengst on guitar,
Youmna Saba on oud
and Derya Yildirim on
saz will take the stage
at Ausland.
Apr 26, 21:00
Chick Corea
Witness one of the
driving forces behind
jazz fusion play solo
piano at Apostel-
Paulus-Kirche.
Apr 28, 20:00
In her 2015 album Platform,
Berlin-based American composer
Holly Herndon already addressed
questions of public surveillance and
privacy in our digital age. With access
to the Berliner Festspiele’s latest
immersive technological gadget, the
ISM Hexadome (see sidebar), the
experimental musician now tackles
issues of data collection and artificial
intelligence along with her husband
and longtime collaborator Mathew
Dryhurst in a double performance and
an ensuing installation.
With six screens and surround
sound, the Hexadome was designed
for “immersive” experiences
– what’s your angle on that?
Mathew Dryhurst: We’re less interested
in creating a work for people to
simply spectate, and more interested
in the dynamics of immersion as a
means to gather data from people.
In the Facebook model, the politics
of immersion – choosing your own
adventure, sharing and getting lost in
that universe – is used quite transparently
to sell an advertising service to
collect data on individuals. We’re taking
that approach, hopefully, towards
more positive ends. We’re training
our AI baby on the contributions the
participants are making in the space.
What is the AI baby?
Holly Herndon: The AI baby is a computer
that is being trained right now,
mostly on audio files of my voice. She
learns from the audio that we feed
her, and then she tries to reproduce it
in a way that’s unique to her. She’ll be
listening to the audience’s response
and then she’ll be trying to recreate it;
almost like a shadow of the performance
for the installation.
Doesn’t meddling with AI get
creepy? HH: Of course, there are ethical
grey areas. It’s already an ethical
question to be recording the audience.
And you have to deal with these
grey areas if you want to understand
the subject matter. The problem is
that if you’re just complaining or just
criticising, you’re not offering a new
avenue. To create our own fantasy or
future, we really have to deal with the
subject matter with all of its complications.
That’s our job at Martin-Gropius-Bau,
to create a compelling experience
for people to be able to envision
an alternative path. MD: The race
towards fully immersive experiences
How about the implications
of surveillance in your piece?
MD: This performance is less about
surveillance. But everything we’re collecting
is generalised and abstracted
away from an individual. There’s no
categorisation of people in there.
We’ve done a lot of different data
collection projects in the past, and
part of the initial exercise was just
being surprised by how willing people
were to give up information. You can
spend your time warning someone
about something. Then you go and
perform in front of a lot of people and
ask them to contribute data, and they
seem really happy to. HH: There’s a
cognitive dissonance there. The information
is out there, and people are
aware, but they’re willing to suspend
that knowledge.
For cultural institutions, the latest
technology is usually a big selling
point. HH: Not just institutions
– electronic musicians have a really
bad history when it comes to that. It’s
basically making demo art for tech
companies. Google gives you 100K to
do a video with their new tech; VR
is now on the market, let’s try to
make this interesting. Our role is, of
course, to engage in new technology,
but question it and figure out what’s
32 EXBERLINER 170