FILE 2024

QUBIT AI | quantum & synthetic ai
Electronic Language International Festival
July 3rd to August 25th
Tuesday to Sunday, 10am – 8pm
FIESP Cultural Center

Design: André Lenz
Image: Iskarioto Dystopian AI Films – Athena

QUBIT AI

In its 25 years of existence, the International Electronic Language Festival (FILE) is an internationally renowned Brazilian project that since 2000 has explored the intersection between art and technology. With more than two decades of history, the festival stands out for fostering exhibition spaces and debate about artistic innovations driven by disruptive and innovative technologies, inviting the public to get involved with experimental forms of art that challenge the boundaries of conventionality. Currently, two of these technologies stand out in the contemporary scenario: the accelerated development of quantum computing and artificial intelligence corroborated by synthetic data.

Quantum computing, an emerging revolution in the technological field, offers a new range of creative possibilities for contemporary artists. This new era allows the exploration of unprecedented frontiers through a new computational format that consists mainly of quantum superposition and entanglement, a new field of exploration for synthetic computer science, as well as for the arts in general; on the other hand, artificial intelligence, fueled by synthetic data, offers artists a new way of making and understanding art, opening up space for new forms, concepts and artistic expressions.

Entitled QUBIT AI, the exhibition delves into this unexplored territory presenting a selection of works of art resulting from the connection between artistic creation and technology, proposing a theoretical reflection on what the interrelationship between quantum computers and synthetic artificial intelligence will be.

Visitors will be invited to experience immersive installations, experimental videos, digital sculptures and other forms of interactive art, which intertwine reality and imagination. The exhibition encourages reflections on the influence of technology on art and contemporary society, while at the same time providing an environment to compare already established technological arts (analog and digital) with the possible futures of art in the synthetic era, enhanced by quantum computing. The QUBIT AI exhibition at FILE SP 2024 transcends the mere presentation of works of art; it is a journey to the limits of human creativity, driven by the convergence of art, science and technology.

Ricardo Barreto and Paula Perissinotto
co-organizers and curators of FILE
International Electronic Language Festival

This research used stigmergy behaviour, another example of agency-based systems, which could be programmed to be highly adaptive to local data. What is most intriguing and attractive in this case, is contrasting organic aesthetics emerging from algorithms like stigmergy, with its plant like formations, and the hyper-rationalisation and genericity of voxelised geometry. Different resolutions were introduced in the facade panels, by using an octree algorithm. The result is a building skin that from afar looks like a plant, but in close up has almost Minecraft-like aesthetics coming from a multi-resolution voxel field. Organic stigmergy (stígma + ergon) partly plays a role in the distribution of data through the facade field, rather than generating geometry. It leaves its imprint in the density of geometry

Data.scape
Permanent Installation
Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media. He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.

Silent Percussion
File Festival
The “Silent Percussion Project” (SPP) consists in building a set of computer musical instruments that use human gestures to control sounds, composing and performing with them in an attempt to re-incorporate the body in music performance practice. The “SPP” is a response to the question: what kinds of musical instruments does live computer music performance need? To answer this question it researches the aesthetic qualities and language of non-live electronic music, action-perception systems and new media theory to experiment new ways of bridging between gesture and sound. In that sense, the “SPP” looks to address the problem of sound control by introducing new sensing techniques that take advantage of our sensorimotor capabilities. The Silent Drum and MANO instruments analyze shapes made by hands and transform them into multiple streams of continuous data. These streams, or variables, are directly applied to sound control, avoiding the key paradigm. Continuous data is analyzed to extract discrete features of the signals. The variables resulting from analysis are interdependent, that is, changes in one result in changes in the others, creating complex systems that the performer learns by experimentation.

Брайан Ино
브라이언 이노
ブライアン·イーノ
בריאן אינו
براين إينو
Брайан Ино
Music for Airports
Initially, he referred to these quiet soundscapes as “discreet” music, and on Discreet Music (a wry deconstruction of “Pachelbel’s Canon in D”) demonstrates his basic tools: minimal melodies, subtle textures, and variable repetition. Around this time, he had also been collaborating with the German synth duo Cluster on a pair of moody, coloristic electronic albums, selections from which may be found on the Begegnungen and Begegnungen II compilations. But it was Music for Airports that finally codified these experiments into an aesthetic, and even provided a label for the sound: ambient music.