Tuomas A. Laitinen presents Swarm Chorus. He composed a performative installation and a sound piece with generative tools that are interpreting the construction of medieval musical canons. The work as a whole is likened to an ecosystem of circulating substances, with its words, inspired by ecological science fiction, functioning as fictional recipe poems describing and decoding an alchemistic combination of matter and meaning.
In Swarm Chorus, one can find ancient epistemic modalities layered with the notion of extended embodied mind as a conductor for accumulated knowledge. Aside from the performance with singers and ultrasonic speaker, a speculative score for the composition is displayed in the form of an installation consisting of a video—partly generated by an AI—and a series of hand-printed scrolls.
Performers: Valisa Krairiksh, Eeva Semerdjiev, Amel Sihvonen, Pauliina Sjöberg, Ullamai Varis
Costume design: Pauliina Sjöberg
Coding and technical consultation: Marko Tandefelt
The work was realized as part of The Library’s Other Intelligences, an art project organized by the Finnish Cultural Institute in New York through its MOBIUS Fellowship Program in collaboration with the Helsinki Public Library. The project was curated by MOBIUS Fellows Shannon Mattern and Parikka and featured newly commissioned artworks, original research and a series of events. On view at Central Library Oodi in Helsinki from January 11 to March 10, 2019.
Video documentation by Hannu Karjalainen
Supported by Kone Foundation
fciny.org/projects/the-librarys-other-intelligences
