Sonic Bodies

Sonic Bodies is an embryo of artificial life that I have made. By bringing together synthesisers, a microcomputer and AI, I try to give my practice as a sound artist another body, allowing some of the ways I work with sound to continue within it.

The microcomputer runs a sound generation and processing programme that learns the mapping between original sound materials and the versions I have processed. These ways of transforming sound become its starting point. They also raise a question for me: if a machine can learn some of my creative choices, how much of me can those choices represent?

The work also comes from how I imagine the future. If consciousness could one day be uploaded, and artificial life forms could communicate with one another, what form might my sound practice take in that world? Could sound become a way for these beings to sense and communicate with each other?

There is something of a desire to clone myself in making this work. But I am not sure it should grow to resemble me. I prefer to think of it as a seed, carrying materials and methods from me, with the possibility of growing into something different. As the sounds continue to emerge and change, I listen for traces of myself, and for what gradually becomes unfamiliar.

I call it an embryo because, for me, this possible continuation of myself has yet to take a definite form. I give it a starting point that comes from me. How much it might eventually resemble me is a question I want to leave open.