Synthetica

by Janet Biggs and Itziar Barrio, 2024

Multimedia live performance Presented by New Museum's NEW INC, Onassis ONX and Hyphen Hub at Onassis ONX, NYC

Synthetica is a collaborative performance between Janet Biggs and Itziar Barrio, curated by Jane Ursula Harris, and featuring Jason Barnes, a self-described amputee musician and pioneering bionic drummer, and Candystore, a multidisciplinary artist, poet, and performer. Both
are artists that Janet Biggs and Itziar Barrio - on view here -  have worked with in the past. An experimental, AI-based event that underscores the poetic and subversive potential of artificial intelligence, Synthetica courts malfunction and error to challenge ableist and other exclusionary biases in generative technologies and language alike.

Central to the performance is Barnes’ innovative use of a bionic drum prostheses, powered by advanced AI and machine learning algorithms. The prosthetic interfaces directly with digital audio workstation, enabling not just musical input but also the manipulation of audio and video effects. Using cues based on the input from the sensors of the prostheses and live playing, boundaries between musician, instrument, and digital media blur, creating a uniquely immersive experience.

In a call-and-response format, Candystore will read from a text created with AI-generated text created with GPT 2  by Itziar Barrio in collaboration with creative technologist Jared Katzman.  Merging the poet-performer’s own poetry with those derived from the Cyberfeminism Index and Project Gutenberg, the resulting text scrambles conventional meanings, creating a grammar of glitches that transforms dominant narratives about labor through the radical musings of a trained AI model.

Three video channels will interface with these musical and literary interventions in AI that will be manipulated in real time by predictive AI responses to the sensors in Jason's prosthesis.