Closing (IM)POSSIBLE BODIES
Reeps100 featuring. A.I. ‘Second Self’: Human and Machine
Second Self is an art and science collaboration between Reeps100, Dada Bots and the E.A.T. program at Nokia Bell labs. The collaboration is a live performance piece designed to integrate machine learning and generative audio as a practical artistic tool and to raise awareness about machine learning beyond the academic, technological and engineering demographics through the medium of film and performance.
Reeps100 grew up using his relationship with AI to develop his abilities as a tournament chess player. Today, machine learning allows us to develop “opponents,” “collaborators” and “mentors” in nearly any form of hyper-specialism as long as there is a suitable data set for training. Chess neural nets, using a large dataset of games by expert players, are trained to probabilistically predict the next moves an expert would make. Whereas our vocal neural net, using a large dataset of voices recorded by Reeps100, was trained to probabilistically predict the next millisecond of raw audio.
Reeps100
Harry Yeff (AKA Reeps100) is an ARS PRIX Electronica nominated artist and musician based in London. Yeff’s expertise in vocal musicianship and creative direction has generated an online global following, rendering over 100 million views and recognition as a pioneer of experimental vocalism. In 2018 Yeff completed his third artist residency at Harvard University and is currently part of the Experiments in Art and Technology program at Bell Labs. Yeff produces work as a response to an ongoing investigation into the evolution of the human voice, art, and science. He has exhibited internationally as one of the most decorated and progressive lateral thinkers in the world of voice and technology.