MACHINE LISTENING reconvenes on Saturday, 13 March 2021 with a new online live event, "Improvisation and Control," staged as part of the NTU CCA Singapore’s recurring Free Jazz exhibition program.

MACHINE LISTENING launched in October 2020 with an open access curriculum site and series of online presentations, performances and pedagogical experiments at Unsound Festival in Poland, and reconvenes on Sat, 13. Mar 2021 with a new online live event, ‘Improvisation and Control.’

Staged as part of the NTU CCA Singapore’s recurring Free Jazz exhibition program, this episode will focuses on the complex and evolving dialectic between improvisation and control, framed via a detour into the experimental computer music laboratories of the 1980s and 1990s where the term ‘machine listening’ first begins to circulate.

‘Machine Listening: Improvisation and Control’ will feature new performances, presentations and works by Bridget Chappell (Australia), Mattin (Basque Country), Luca Lum (Singapore), Bani Haykal (Singapore), Lee Weng Choy (Malaysia), Lee Gamble (UK) and Jessica Feldman (USA).

Attendance of this event is via Zoom, with live streams on the Liquid Architecture Facebook page and YouTube channel.

Our devices are listening to us.

Previous generations of audio-technology transmitted, recorded or manipulated sound. Today our digital voice assistants, smart speakers and a growing range of related technologies are now able to analyse and respond to it as well. Scientists and engineers increasingly refer to this as ‘machine listening’, though the first widespread use of the term was in computer music. Machine listening is much more than just a new scientific discipline or vein of technical innovation however. It is also an emergent field of knowledge-power, of data extraction and colonialism, capital accumulation, automation and the management of desire. It demands critical and artistic attention.

MACHINE LISTENING is an investigation and experiment in collective learning, instigated by artist Sean Dockray, legal scholar James Parker, and curator Joel Stern for Liquid Architecture. Improvisation and Control features new contributors: Bridget Chappell (Australia), Mattin (Basque), Luca Lum (Singapore), Bani Haykal (Singapore), Lee Weng Choy (Malaysia), and Jessica Feldman (USA).

Learn more | https://machinelistening.exposed/curriculum/