Sónar, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and betevé are partnering to present, for the first time in Barcelona, the AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival (27th and 28th October 2021); an event focused on the applications, challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence in music creation.

The AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival will feature nearly 30 activities, including shows, presentations and lectures by artists who incorporate artificial intelligence as an essential element in their musical projects.
 

World Premieres and Co-Creations

Among the 21 shows on the program, most of them absolute premieres, feature co-creations developed expressly for the festival in which the artists have worked hand in hand with artificial intelligence researchers from the UPC. These include the opening concert from pianist and composer Marco Mezquida, the show from choreographer Kiani del Valle together with visual artists Hamill Industries or the interactive show with audience participation created by the Catalan DJ and producer Awwz.

Also co-created for the occasion, the AI and Music Festival presents a research project and artistic residency from Holly Herndon, a pioneer in experiments with the human voice and artificial intelligence, together with Maria Arnal and Tarta Relena. This unique vocal ensemble, under the title ‘Holly+’, will create a human and virtual polyphony, exclusively for the festival. Another highlight of the program is  "Of Randomness and Imperfection", a show whose concept comes from the collaboration between artists and researchers Reiko Yamada and Maciej Lewenstein, in collaboration with the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO).
 

The full list of shows taking place:

Marco Mezquida “Piano+AI”, Holly Herndon “Holly+”, feat. Maria Arnal, Tarta Relena and Mathew Dryhurst, Mouse on Mars AAI Live, Hamill Industries & Kiani del Valle "Engendered Otherness. A symbiotic AI dance ensemble, AWWZ b2b AI DJ, Bot Bop “Integers and Strings”, Nabihah Iqbal and Libby Heaney, ”Interpreting Quantum Randomness”. Concept by Reiko Yamada and Maciej Lewenstein, Rob Clouth A/V Live, Franz Rosati “Latentscape”, Hongshuo Fan “Metamorphosis”, “Polifonia”, “Jazz as Social Machine”.

AI and Music Broadcasts by YACHT, “Chameleon's Blendings'‘ interpreted by the String Quartet of the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya-OBC and pianist Fani Karagianni, Human Brother, Hexorcismos, LP Duo and  DIANA AI Song Contest.
 

Talks

The AI and Music Festival will also offer a series of talks and round tables with the participation of scientists, artists and professionals who will discuss the uses, experiments and potential of AI as a transformative element in music and how to bring it closer to the general public, emphasizing, for example, new instruments and ways of performing and creating or how to teach machines to listen, see and feel in a human key. The titles of the talks are Musicians Learning Machine Learning, Teaching machines to feel like humans do, AI and future music genres and Make way for the new music instruments!
 

Hackathons

The defacto start of the festival will take place on Saturday October 23 with the celebration of two 24hour hackathons, developed by UPC in face-to-face and online format: one on AI and education, An EducationalHack presented by Ableton, (developed by the UPC in collaboration with SokoTech), and a LiveCodingHack, presented by NTT DATA (developed by the UPC in collaboration with Hangar).
 

Thinking Lab

Beyond the event itself, the AI and Music Festival has created the Thinking Lab, a space for debate and co-creation, coordinated by UPC and Sónar, which transcends the festival. The Thinking Lab counts with the  participation of experts, scientists, artists and professionals who exchange experiences and knowledge that have served to nurture some of the presentations and shows of the festival and whose conclusions will be published later in a white paper on music and AI.

AI and Music Festival is an initiative of S+T+ARTS, the European Commission, Sónar, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and betevé, in association with Factory Berlin, c/o pop Festival, Bozar, the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO), Barcelona Supercomputing Center-BSC, Quantum Music, Polifonia, Artificia, L'Auditori Sit Back and ESMUC. AI and Music Festival is sponsored by NTT DATA and Ableton.

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