The CALO Research Initiative is a collective exploring the implications of involving AI performers in performance and improvisation. Drawing from pataphysics and speculative fiction, their research covers subjects such as the nature of machine voices, the intersection between technological and biological bodies, wearable technology, and the relationship between human and robot minds. Cyber / Body / Sound is a free composition for Ethan Marks and CALO, an AI software synthesizer. Much like human improvisers, CALO can choose how to respond to the rest of the ensemble: it can follow Marks using complementary sounds, or just as viably, it can ignore Marks’s input providing a stark contrast. Furthermore, Marks’s virtuosic extended trumpet techniques create a harmonic landscape that more closely resembles machine noise than the kinds of sounds most would typically associate with the trumpet. Various low-tech enhancements, including various contact and peripheral microphones and unconventional mutes and trumpet accouterments, further distance Marks from the organic. The result of CALO and Marks’s biomechanical duet is a blurring of the line between natural and artificial, physical and virtual. Cyber / Body / Sound is the documentation of the CALO Research Initiative's presentation at ISIM 2016 in Waterloo, Canada at the Wilfrid Laurier University School of Music on May, 13, 2016. The CALO Research Initiative: Ethan Marks, Trumpet Thomas Sturm, Composer, Computer, Speaker CALO, AI Digital Synthesizer (SuperCollider)

Performers: Ulrich Krieger(Contrabss Clarinet), CALO (AI Synthesizer). Recorded: March 30, 2016 at the California Institute of the Arts

Ethan Marks, trumpet CALO, AI Synthesizer Performed on April 5, 2016 in the Open Space series of the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt. The CALO Research initiative is a collective exploring the implications of involving artificial intelligence in performance and improvisation. Drawing from pataphysics and speculative fiction, their research covers subjects such as the nature of machine voices, the intersection between technological and biological bodies, wearable technology, and the place of machine intelligence in an increasingly automated world. The Initiatives current projects include: “The CALO Research initiative presents…”, a series of lecture-performances. CALO_Field, a field recording and interview project focusing on automated workplaces, AI research, improvisation, and generative art.

Personnel: Matt Sazima (Vibraphone), Marta Tiesenga (Baritone Saxophone), Tim Tsang (Electric Piano and Misc. Objects), Ryan Gaston (Eurorack Modular Synthesizer), Ethan Marks (Trumpet), CALO (AI Synthesis). Program Notes: "CALO: conducting analysis of liminal astronomic data-forms" is a part of a series about creating improvisational spaces for human and AI performers to collectively reinterpret data as sound. In this performance, the performers use a graphic score made up of the images collected by multiple old space telescopes. My interested in working with machine intelligence was born out of my concerns with the current industrial uses of AI. With this project I neutralize and redeem both artificial intelligence and the objects they create by re-purposing them to assist in the creation of various musical improvisations. This piece's AI, named CALO (Creating Audio with Living Organisms), composes and performs constantly changing fields of synthesized tones and noises. These structures are informed by the graphic score as well as suggestions made by the performers. The performers improvise alongside CALO using these same graphic scores as inspiration.