‘The Pen Test’ dress rehearsal

Join the TU Delft Library in welcoming visiting researchers from America as a part of the Langugage x Power programme.

Prior to their performance at Studium Generale’s For Love of the World festival, Jesse (experimental music) Allison and Derick Ostrenko (digital art)--along with Library programmaker, Vincent Cellucci, a long-time collaborator--will have a free and open concert harnessing user mobile technology, including a dress rehearsal of their new AI performance:

‘The Pen Test’

It wants to get to know you—your favorite words and dreams. It separates you from the crowd, finds out what makes you unique. Courts you, that funny, awkward, chatty phase. Thinks it knows you, predicting your next move. Then it starts telling you what to do…Now it has demands. It needs constant input and validation. It wants to know where this is going. If it’s not headed to the next level, maybe it’s collapsing. Maybe it needs to end or you need to end this.

For this part experiment, part performance, part collaborative poem, we will combine interactive technology, large language models, and mobile devices to test the hold words and algorithms have on us as humans. Audience participation is required.

There will be a short Q&A after the concert to help unpack some of the performances and technology. Borrel to follow.

This experimental concert will consist of a set of interactive pieces including:

1. ‘Diamonds in Dystopia’ - an audience participatory app and generative poetry performance
2. ‘No Peace’ - a protest drawing from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests
3. ‘Advice from a Caterpillar’ - drawing from 8 years of sonic experiments with AI and helps discuss the difference between artificial intelligence and creativity
4. 'The Pen Test'+ other works (TBD)

Bios:

Jesse Allison is a leader in sonic art technology, thought, and practice and an Associate Professor of Electronic Music at Louisiana State University (LSU).

Derick Ostrenko is an Associate Professor of Digital Art at LSU and media artist who creates physical and virtual systems that reveal hidden networks between people by creating structures for innovative forms of expression and discovery.

Vincent Cellucci is a poet with a curious aptitude for digital multimedia; he works for the TU Delft Library and combines poetry and computational creativity at Leiden University.

Host or Publisher TU Delft Library