Author: Erin Gee

of the soone

of the soone (2018) Print

2014

A disembodied voice invites the listener to partake in a speculative audio treatment that promises to awaken underdeveloped neural passageways through exposure to the non-human processes of neural network language acquisition.

In this work, media artists Erin Gee and Sofian Audry expose listeners to the architectures of an artificial intelligence algorithm through the sounds of an Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) roleplay. ASMR is a genre of audio and videomaking developed by internet aficionados interested in using specific everyday sounds (whispering, soft voice, crinkling and textured sounds) alongside verbal suggestion to “trigger” pleasant tingling reactions in the body of the listener. The artists combined these ASMR principles of sound with artificial intelligence to create a speculative neural conditioning treatment. In of the soone, the listener encounters a soft female voice that whispers a script written by a machine learning algorithm as it slowly loses its neural training and “forgets.” This combination of algorithmic text and ASMR connects the unconscious, automatic processes of artificial intelligence algorithms to the autonomous reactions of the human body to sound, using intimacy to “hack” into the subconscious of the human listener and recondition neural pathways.

Exhibition history

October 2020: Digital Cultures: Imagined Futures Audio Programme curated by Joseph Cutts. Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warszawa Poland

June 9 to August 19, 2018: Pendoran Vinci. Art and Artificial Intelligence Today  curated by Peggy Schoenegge and Tina Sauerländer. NRW Forum, Düsseldorf, Germany

January 2018: Her Environment @ TCC Gallery, Chicago

Sounds

of the soone (2018)

Gallery

of the soone – print. text 2018. Courtesy of artists.

Jury member for Equitable Bank EDAA

I am pleased to have been selected to join the jury of the 2017 competition for the Equitable Bank Emerging Digital Artist Award.  Equitable Bank’s Emerging Digital Artist Award celebrates early-career artists doing exemplary works in digital media, reflecting their interest in creating opportunities for digital innovation.

Award Program Description

The Emerging Digital Artists Award (EDAA) is one of the only corporately funded digital art awards in Canada, designed to foster experimentation in the work of emerging artists and build on funding opportunities currently available to those working in digital media.

The Equitable Bank Collection

Equitable Bank began collecting art in the early 90s and currently holds over 150 artworks in its collection. Our collection focuses on modern and contemporary Canadian art, with a particular interest in modern painting. Our contemporary collection also includes video animation—an area of continued growth, concurrently with the growth of the EDAA.

For more information,

http://edaa.equitablebank.ca/

Project H.E.A.R.T.

Project H.E.A.R.T. (2017)

2017

A biodata-driven VR game where militainment and pop music fuel a new form of emotional drone warfare.

A twist on popular “militainment” shooter video games, Project H.E.A.R.T. invites the viewer to place their fingers on a custom biodata device, and summon their enthusiasm to engage their avatar, Yowane Haku, in “combat therapy.” Fans of the Vocaloid characters may recognize Haku as the “bad copy” of Japanese pop celebrity Hatsune Miku, a holographic personnage that invites her fans to pour their content and songs into her virtual voice.

The biosensing system features a pulse sensor, and a skin conductance sensor of Gee’s design. Through principles of emotional physiology and affective computing, the device gathers data relative to heart rate and blood flow from index finger, and skin conductance from middle and ring fingers of users. The biodata is read by a microcontroller and transferred to Unity VR, thus facilitating emotional interactivity: a user’s enthusiasm (spikes in signal amplitude in skin conductance, elevated heart rate, and shifts in amplitude of the pulse signal) stimulates the holographic pop star to sing in the virtual warzone, thus inspiring military fighters to continue the war, and create more enemy casualties. At the end of the experience the user is confronted with their “score” of traumatized soldiers vs enemies killed, with no information whether this means that they won or lost the “game”.

The user is thus challenged to navigate soldier’s emotional anxieties and summon their positivity to activate Haku’s singing voice as soldiers battle not only against a group of enemies, but also against their own lack of confidence in times of global economic instability.

The landscape of Project H.E.A.R.T. was built from geopolitically resonant sites found on Google Maps, creating a dreamlike background for the warzone. In-game dialogue wavers between self-righteous soldier banter typical of video games, and self-help, bringing the VR participant to an interrogation of their own emotional body in a virtual space that conflates war, pop music, drone technology, and perhaps movement-induced VR nausea.

As Kathryn Hamilton pointed out in her 2017 essay “Voyeur Realism” for New Inquiry,

“VR’s genesis and development is in the military, where it has been used to train soldiers in “battle readiness,” a euphemism for: methods to overcome the innate human resistance to firing at another human being. In the last few years, VR’s usage has shifted 180 degrees from a technology used to train soldiers for war, to one that claims to “amplify” the voices afflicted by war, and to affect “world influencers” who might be able to stop said wars.”

Credits

Narrative Design: Sofian Audry, Roxanne Baril-Bédard, Erin Gee
3D Art: Alex Lee and Marlon Kroll
Animation and Rigging: Nicklas Kenyon and Alex Lee
VFX: Anthony Damiani, Erin Gee, Nicklas Kenyon
Programming: Sofian Audry, Erin Gee, Nicklas Kenyon, Jacob Morin
AI Design: Sofian Audry
Sound Design: Erin Gee, Austin Haughton, Ben Hinckley, Ben Leavitt, Nicolas Ow
BioSensor Hardware Design: Erin Gee and Martin Peach
BioSensor Case Design: Grégory Perrin
BioSensor Hardware Programming: Thomas Ouellet Fredericks, Erin Gee, Martin Peach
Featuring music by Lazerblade, Night Chaser and Austin Haughton
Yowane Haku character designed by CAFFEIN
Yowane Haku Cyber model originally created by SEGA for Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA 2nd (2010)
Project H.E.A.R.T. also features the vocal acting talents of Erin Gee, Danny Gold, Alex Lee, Ben McCarthy, Gregory Muszkie, James O’Calloghan, and Henry Adam Svec.

Thanks to the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and AMD Radeon, this project was commissioned by Trinity Square Video for the exhibition Worldbuilding, curated by John G Hampton and Maiko Tanaka.

This project would have not been possible without the logistical and technical support of the following organizations:

Technoculture Art and Games Lab (Concordia University)

Concordia University

ASAP Media Services (University of Maine)

Exhibition history

November-December 2017  Worldbuilding @ Trinity Square Video, Toronto

February-March 2018 Future Perfect @ Hygienic Gallery, New London Connecticut

April 26-28, 2018 @ Digifest, Toronto

June 7-17, 2019 @ Elektra Festival, Montreal

January 2020 @ The Artist Project, Toronto

October 2020 @ Festival LEV Matadero, Spain

Links

Project H.E.A.R.T. official website
Worldbuilding Exhibition Website
Review in Canadian Art
My research blog: Pop and Militainment
Featured on Radiance VR

Video

Project H.E.A.R.T (2017)
Installation and Gameplay

Gallery

MediaLive Festival 2017

Happy to announce that I will be presenting a new version of my “BioSynth” at the MediaLive festival (Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art) in May.  This year’s festival features an amazing group of artists, gathering under the theme THE VOID.  For this upcoming performance I will be moving towards a more sophisticated sonic treatment of the physiological signals, and returning to the ideas of “choir” and “vocality” of emotion that I began with my earlier work “Song of Seven: BioChoir” with the Hamilton Children’s Choir.

Forward-Thinking Artists: Canadian Art Magazine

I’m featured in the January 2017 edition of Canadian Art Magazine! I’m particularly honored to be a part of this issue, entitled Futures. Including essays by the amazing Kai Cheng Thom, indigenous futures, an article on Xenofeminism, as well as a feature on “Forward Thinking” Canadian artists, I feel like this publication really reflects my attention as an artist equally engaged with science fiction as well as political realities of the moment.

Click here to read the full feature written by Rea McNamara, which includes 10 profiles of amazing Canadian artists working across media.

canadian_art2017

VR Commission Update

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the art developed last summer in a residency at the Technoculture Art and Games lab at Concordia University with lead 3D artist Alex Lee, AI designer Sofian Audry, art assistant Marlon Kroll, and research assistant Roxanne Baril-Bédard. Among holographic popstars who may or may not have their own consciousness to begin with, the project includes rhetorical analysis of post 9/11 counterterrorist video games, reality television, startup culture, and self-help manuals for improving emotional state.

I am implementing the Biosensor control system this Winter and plan on working on finalizing the game’s art, music and sounds this summer for a launch towards the end of 2017 in an exhibition at Trinity Square Video in Toronto.


In the future, weapons of war possess advanced AI systems, systems that guarantee successful automated combat on behalf of soldiers wielding the technology.  The military still trains its soldiers in case of equipment failure, but at this point, fighters function more as passive operators. The terrorist threat has nothing similar to this technology in their ranks, and the effectiveness of our systems is swift and deadly.  Historically, our soldiers manning the machines have never witnessed violence or devastation at this scale: the largest threat to soldiers today defending our nation’s values is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

To address this unfortunate state of affairs, the military developed a startup fund open to the public to resolve this issue through technological innovation.  Significant scholarships and research funding was provided for researchers interested in devoting time to creating a means towards mitigating the psychological crisis.  A risky but intriguing proof of concept was eventually presented: the creation of a revolutionary entertainment for the troops as they fought the terrorist threat.

Yowane Haku became the face of this entertainment: a mobile holographic pop star engineered specifically for psychological distraction on the battlefield.  

The world’s most talented engineers, design consultants, and pop writing teams were assembled to enshrine Haku with every aesthetic and technical element to impress not only the troops, but the world with her next-generation technology.  However, the initial test-run of this mobile holographic pop medium in combat trials was….a failure.  

On the battlefield, Haku’s perfect body glowed faintly amongst the dust and screams, bullets and explosions passing ineffectually, dance moves precise, vocalizations on point. But ultimately her pop music performance lacked resonance with the battle.  Instead of the soldiers being emboldened by this new entertainment, which was intended to distract or inspire them from their gruesome tasks, their adverse psychological symptoms…flourished.  Some of the men went mad, laughing maniacally in tune with the holographic presence smiling sweetly at them.  It was only due to the superiority of our AI weaponry and automated drone operation that the morally corrupt foreign threat, with their violent and technologically crude methods, were stopped that day. The minds of our soldiers were lost.

Months later, a young pool of startup professionals would provide another solution.  This vocal minority of engineers…though others called them crazy….had a hunch. For the hologram pop star to “work,” her systems needed access pure emotion, to link a human element with the trauma of the human soldiers.  But it was not clear who, or what, could best provide this emotional link…and what amount of embodied “disruption” this might entail…

This enthusiastically crowdfunded group of millennials completed their groundbreaking research without the strings of ethics funding or institutional control.  Human emotions and consciousness now flow direct to Haku via experimental trials in VR technology.  Haku rises again on the battlefront.

Simultaneously, a new reality television show has been borne of these first human trials. The star of this reality show could be…….you.

Could you be the next American Sweetheart?  Do you have what it takes to provide 110% Best Emotional Performance?  Join us through advanced VR technologies, Live and Direct on the battlefield, to find out if you could be fit to man the ultimate weapon of war: Our Next Holographic Idol.

This project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and Trinity Square Video’s AMD VR lab

BioSolo

BioSolo 2016
Photography: Wren Noble

2016

Using the BioSynth, I improvised a set for my breath/voice and my sonified heart and sweat release at No Hay Banda in an evening that also featured the very interesting work of composer Vinko Globokar (Russia).

The improvisation is very sparing, the goal is to exploit interesting rhythmic moments between heavy breath-song and the heartbeat, all the while exploring limits of respiratory activity and seeing what effect it has on my physiology.

Exhibition/Performance history

BioSolo was first performed at No Hay Banda series in Montreal at La Sala Rossa, organized by Daniel Àñez and Noam Bierstone.

Gallery

BioSolo 2016
Photography: Wren Noble

Musicworks #126 Interview

Click here to read my interview with Alex Varty.  “ERIN GEE SINGS THE BODY ELECTRONIC”

Fresh on the heels of my return from the premiere of Echo Grey in Vancouver (my newest composition for vocal quartet, feedback soloist and tape), I find I’ve received my physical copy of Musicworks, which is a triannually released publication featuring experimental sounds from across Canada.

Amidst a really massive transition phase right now, I find that teaching full time has really changed what I can do as an artist.  Pushing myself to learn entirely new skillsets in organization and pedagogical performance (sidenote: yes, everything is a performance) has left me with little time or energy to invest in building new technologies.

Music composition has been something that I can invest time into, as all I need is a few moments, a microphone, my laptop, a notepad with pencil scribbles, my imagination.

This interview with Musicworks magazine was very interesting for me, as recently my opportunities have been coming from music composition.  The whole issue is actually very interesting, with a full feature on music and sound revolution in VR spaces, as well as some features on other very energetic and productive electroacoustic artists.

Musicworks #126 is available now with a special curated cd of sounds included in the physical magazine.  On this CD you can find a track from my Voice of Echo (2011) series.

Echo Grey

Echo Grey (2016)

2016

Echo Grey is a composition for four voices, feedback musical instruments, and tape part (which features the sounds of a broken image file).

Movement between words or utterance, the echo’s voice exceeds the signal itself and speaks to a deeper engagement with materiality.  In Echo Grey, I composed a series of vocal patterns that emerge directly with breath as raw material, the movement of intake and exhalation made audible. The choir’s engagement with the mechanistic, impossible repetition eventually negates the signal: all that is left is the lungs and vocal vibrations of the individual who gasps, cries in defeat, and whoops in ecstasy.  These human voices are simultaneously punctuated by the feedback of microphone and amplified instruments, and a tape track composed through process – a bouncing of data back and forth between visual and aural softwares that eventually results in nothing but glitched statements.  This tape track is analogous to the squealing proximity of the sender to the receiver in the scored feedback parts.  The colour grey in the work’s title is inspired by the back and forth motion of a 2HB pencil stroking endlessly across an empty pad of paper.

Performance history

World premiere at Vancouver New Music with Andrea Young, Marina Hasselberg, Sharon Chohi Kim, Micaela Tobin, Michael Day, Braden Diotte, and Erin Gee in November 2016.

It has also been performed at Open Space Gallery (Victoria), and Neworks (Calgary).

Scores

Echo Grey (2016)

Sounds

Echo Grey (2016)

NO HAY BANDA Montréal

Erin Gee – solo vocal performance November 28th 2016 – Sala Rossa, Montreal with Vinko Globocar

As part of NO HAY BANDA programming series with the support of Suoni Per Il Popolo.

More information:

NO HAY BANDA is a series of live musical events that aims to provide new outlets for artistic innovation and expression. Presented with the support of Suoni Per Il Popolo, programmes are designed to broaden and challenge the musical experience of the audience, showcasing the work of the young avant-garde that takes its roots in pop/rock, DIY culture and post-war experimentation.

NO HAY BANDA est une série de concerts qui incite à remettre en question les conceptions conventionnelles de la musique et de la performance, dans le but de créer de nouvelles voies pour l’expression artistique. Présentés avec l’appui de Suoni Per Il Popolo, nos programmes mettent en vedette des propositions de la jeune avant-garde, qui prend ses racines dans le pop/rock, la culture DIY et la musique expérimentale d’après-guerre.

La programmation de NO HAY BANDA cherche à promouvoir l’esthétique d’une nouvelle avant-garde internationale afin de produire des spectacles de ce genre pour la première fois à Montréal. Cette proposition est tirée des réseaux avec lesquels les membres ont été impliqués lors d’activités récentes en Europe et en Amérique.

NO HAY BANDA est un collectif d’artistes formé par trois interprètes de musique nouvelle basés à Montréal : Geneviève Liboiron, Noam Bierstone et Daniel Áñez. À travers notre expérience en création musicale et artistique, nous cherchons à créer un espace de concerts ouvert à un public diversifié où les expériences sonores priment.

NO HAY BANDA promeut la musique née d’une génération qui ne voit plus de barrières entre les différents genres musicaux, le théâtre, l’art performatif et la culture contemporaine. Chaque concert présentera un acte principal de 45-60 minutes avec un contenu international important, précédé par un acte d’ouverture de 20-30 minutes mettant en vedette des jeunes artistes sonores canadiens.

NO HAY BANDA veut devenir une institution dans la programmation musicale montréalaise et canadienne et l’option la plus avant-gardiste en ville. Le collectif est à la musique ce que la galerie d’art indépendante est aux arts visuels; la différence entre le musée et la galerie est toujours claire : le musée expose les œuvres historiques tandis que la galerie propose la créativité et l’innovation. Ainsi, nous oserons être la galerie en musique de l’innovation internationale et de l’avant-garde radicale à Montréal.