At the Kunstfestspiele Herrenhausen, Hannover, Germany.
Inspired by James Bridle’s “Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machine: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence” (2022), the piece explores different forms of expression of intelligence, logic and (musical) structures.
What does it mean to be human in a world where other forms of intelligence also exist? Audiovisual artist and composer Zeno van den Broek poses this question at a time when artificial intelligence is evolving at lightning speed. His latest work, Ways of [ ], is more urgent than ever.
In Ways of [ ], Van den Broek brings humans and machines together in a single musical and visual experience. He composed the piece for two innovative music ensembles – HIIIT and Percussions de Strasbourg – as well as for four digital “musicians”: self-playing percussion machines that perform autonomously while also responding live to the human percussionists. To musically train these digital entities, Van den Broek fed their algorithms with rhythms from industrial history: think steam engines, looms, and other mechanical systems. In this way, the digital players learn – just like humans – from their predecessors and from their musical environment.
Ways of [ ] is an audiovisual composition that feels like the emergence of a new kind of shared intelligence. You see and hear the digital and human musicians gradually learning to understand each other: hesitant at first, then increasingly fluid. In three largely improvised sections, the players discover their own voice and eventually find a shared musical language.
With Ways of [ ], Van den Broek invites the audience to reflect on what intelligence truly is – and what it means to be human.
Coproduction : Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, HIIIT, Les Percussions de Strasbourg
Composition, concept: Zeno van den Broek
Lights: Rui Monteiro
Sound: Piel Benoit
Technical manager: Raffaele Renne
Performers: Hyoungkwon Gil, François Papirer, Yi-Ping Yang (Les Percussions de Strasbourg), Jonathan Bonny, Ryoko Imai, Kalina Vladovska (HIIIT)
⏰ Concert at 7 pm.
🎫 Info and tickets here.
👉 All informations about Ways of [ ] here.
👉 More infos about Hiiit.