This performance by TOPLAP Athens is a network live coding performance that explores the intersection of 16th-century metaphysical poetry and artificial intelligence. Centered on John Donne's poem "The Sun Rising," this piece creates a narrative environment that blends human creativity with machine-generated content. Five performers, each with a distinct role, collaborate by combining tools spanning multiple modalities. The performance integrates live writing, synthetic narration using voice cloning, algorithmic sound design, real-time text sonification, text-to-video generation, and large language model interactions. The performance structure follows the three stanzas of Donne's poem, each section exploring different emotional and thematic elements. Interludes between stanzas allow for experimental coding interventions and a sonic commentating of the poem’s context. By merging centuries-old poetic forms with available AI technologies, we aim to create a reevaluation of the 16th-century sensibilities and affectivities through the lens of computational media. In this process, we draw a parallel between Donne's chiding of the sun's presumptuous intrusion and our critical examination of AI's pervasive influence on modern lives and creative processes.
Kosmas Giannoutakis is a composer, media artist, computer musician, and researcher based in upstate New York. He engages in artistic and scholarly endeavors that explore contemporary advancements in technology, such as Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Ledger Technology, as well as theoretical concepts including critical posthumanities and speculative materialisms.
Panagiota Anastasopoulou is pursuing her PhD studies at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) within the Music Technology Group (MTG) and contributes as a member of the Freesound project. Her research is centered on the tasks of characterizing and retrieving audio from large and diverse sound collections. With a strong foundation in musicology, she brings a humanistic perspective to the technological advancements emerging from her research by considering their practical applications for users and their impact on artistic expression. Beyond her academic pursuits, she is an artist (aka allholy) who continues to create music and actively engages with artistic communities. She is a practitioner of live coding and currently participates in TOPLAP Athens and TOPLAP Barcelona communities.
Georgios Diapoulis is an adjunct lecturer in the Unit of Interaction Design, at Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg. He teaches courses related to hardware and software prototyping, sound and music design, interactive AI interfaces, and more. His research focuses on live coding, tangible interfaces, sound and music prototyping, interactive AI interfaces and music psychology and perception. He sporadically performs using live coding setups and electronic musical instruments.
Vasilis Agiomyrgianakis is a lecturer, composer and researcher. In 2016 he completed his PhD in music for interactive audiovisual arts. He teaches Computer Sound Design at the University of West Attica Greece. He has experience in live coding audiovisual performances and in developing microcomputer sensor systems for artistic and academic purposes. Part of his research is based on the practical transfer of creative writing to audiovisual storytelling, through a combination of fields such as computer music, computer graphics, performing arts and interaction using existing and new methods and techniques of algorithmic composition. He has published papers, music and participates with his works at various conferences and festivals.
Iannis Zannos has a background in music composition, comparative musicology and computer music with emphasis on interactive performance. He has worked as Director of the Music Technology and Documentation section at the State Institute for Music Research (S.I.M) in Berlin, Germany, and Research Director at the Center for Research for Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has taken part at numerous international collaborative New Media Arts projects and has realized multimedia performances both alone and in cooperation with other artists. He is teaching audio and interactive media arts at the Department of Audiovisual Arts and at the postgraduate course in Arts and Technologies of Sound of the Music Department at the Ionian University, Corfu.
