MEMLNauts

What musical juice can we get out of artificial neural networks? This concert will present a collection of improvised performances from participants in the Musically Embodied Machine Learning project (MEML).  In this workshop we have been building new hybrid musical instruments with embedded machine learning, where AI becomes part of the physical musical instrument.  Embedded machine learning empowers musicians to find new performance approaches, by sharing control with often unpredictable and lively algorithms.  The concert will feature performances with a variety of machine learning augmented acoustics instruments, in solo and group improvisations.

Location: Mengi. Óðinsgata 2, Reykjavík, Iceland
Time: 8 - 10 PM

Performers

Andrea Martelloni: Andrea Martelloni is a guitar player, composer, producer and researcher in digital musical instruments, with a PhD from Queen Mary University of London. His research includes work on the HITar and the field of gesture recognition applied to expressive digital musical instruments. He is also part of the Musically Embodied Machine Learning project at the University of Sussex, where he develops interfaces for the seamless integration of artificial intelligence in musical instruments. He has been playing guitar for over twenty years, studying at the Centro Professione Musica in Milan in his teenage. He is an active session musician in the South East of England. His current main project is Sloth In The City with wife and saxophonist Betty Accorsi. Other projects include solo guitar act Virgult, jazz guitar (Betty Accorsi Quartet, Madz and the Martians), pop (Miss and the Demeanors), folk (Monkey See Monkey Do, Hilltop Ceilidh Band).

Betty Accorsi: Betty Accorsi is multi-instrumentalist and composer. She studied classical saxophone, piano and composition at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatoire in Milan, before moving to London and starting an MMus in Jazz Saxophone at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and a Master’s degree in Performance at Goldsmiths under the guidance of Mick Foster, Paul Bartholomew and Dr Pete Furniss. She is currently the leader of two projects active in England: One is an acoustic duo called Sloth in the City, formed in 2018 with percussive acoustic guitar player Andrea Martelloni. Her main project is the Betty Accorsi Quartet. This was founded with pianist Finn Carter and drummer Scott MacDonald. In December 2020 they released “The Cutty Sark Suite”, an album of compositions blending Wayne Shorter, folk and punk. Their second album “Growing Roots” was released on the 15th July 2022 featuring pianist Daniel Hewson (Groove Armada, Madonna, Incognito), Scott MacDonald on drums and Andy Hamill on bass.

Thor Magnusson: Thor Magnusson has worked in the intersecting areas of music, technology and philosophy in the past decades. He has created a few live coding environments for improvisational musical performance with code as compositional material. He is a member of the Intelligent Instruments Lab which is one of Reykjavik’s breweries for new musical instruments design. Thor is also member of the Brain Dead Ensemble, the most dangerous sonic dynamite collective that sometimes surfaces on the radars of contemporary music.

Chris Kiefer: Chris Kiefer is a computer-musician and musical instrument designer from Brighton UK, where we works in the University of Sussex Experimental Music Technologies Lab. He performs and records with custom-made instruments, exploring lively algorithms and feedback processes. As a live coder and solo-feedback musician he performs under the name ‘Luuma’, with a recent release ‘Ffroeds’ on the Flaming Pines label. He plays an augmented self-resonating cello as half of improv-duo Feedback Cell, and with the feedback-drone-quartet ‘Brain Dead Ensemble’.

Stefanos Skialivas: Stefanos Skialivas is a musician and researcher developing his musical practice by experimenting with electromagnetic field inductors, coils that are able to capture electromagnetic fields and turn them into sound. His means of musical expression consist of DIY instrument-scores built with repurposed obsolete electronic devices. In his performances, he attempts to perceptualize through sound the functional complexity of digital devices and the inaudible wavescapes they produce. He is working as a research assistant at the Intelligent Instruments Lab.

Tom Manoury: Tom Manoury is a French/Icelandic multi-instrumentalist. He grew up in Paris and lived in Brussels for many years before moving to Reykjavik. Mostly self taught, he plays diverse wind instruments such as saxophones, euphonium, harmonica, and many others. He also sings and masters overtone and throat singing. Aside his career as an instrumentalist and composer, he has been doing electronic music for over 15 years and develops interactive tools and intuitive interfaces aimed at live performances and real-time processing.