Channel: FACTmagazine

Category: Music

Description: For this episode of Patch Notes, we invited Manchester sound artist Vicky Clarke to 180 Studios for a special performance of her AURA MACHINE project, accompanied by visuals from her collaborator Sean Clarke. “This piece started off as a 10-minute online AV piece for PRiSM’s Future Music #3 at Royal Northern College of Music last summer,” she explains. “I’ve been working with Sean Clarke since then to develop the work as a live AV performance with the challenge of how to perform and improvise with machine learning materials – hence the new foray into modular. I started with the Make Noise Morphagene and it is slowly growing from there. I aim to develop this as a performance system for sound sculpture – AI and electronics.” AURA MACHINE, which is part of Clarke’s artistic residency with NOVARS, University of Manchester, takes the listener on a journey through what happens to the sound object when processed by a neural network. The piece sees Clarke perform with live objects including her AURA Sculpture #1 STEEL – a resonant AI generated transmutational object (representing the sound object in latent space), and a glass bong. “I became interested in the potential for neural synthesis to generate new raw sound materials and wanted to explore these systems working with my own recordings and sculptures,” Clarke says. “I was interested in what the models would detect and predict from sound data, where the autonomy of the artist is and just what these neural materials sounded like. Could neural synthesis be a new tool for musique concrète? And what does it mean for sampling and composition, as both sound source and collaborator." “I wanted to create a visual narrative which reflected Vicky’s process, creating an immersive experience which plotted the transformational journey of the sounds by the aIgorithm,” Sean Clarke says of the visuals. “Utilising the symbolic content created by the AI, I was able to create a range of interactive scenes which transported the viewer from the material to the virtual world." Vicky Clarke’s AURA MACHINE project continues throughout 2022 with a final sculpture currently being made. Clarke is also developing a music education project for young women around accessible sonic AI working with Brighter Sound. She plans to release the music from this research project towards the end of this year. "My debut EP Sleepstates will be self released this summer 2022 along with an accompanying net art piece,” Clarke says. Vicky Clarke's website: vickyclarke.org Vicky Clarke on Instagram: instagram.com/vickyclarke_sound Sean Clarke's website: test-card.com