Commissioned and performed by Crash Ensemble, with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland 2020

Smock Alley Theatre, New Music Dublin 2021

24 April 2021

Neural synthesis by Dadabots, AI video elements by James Kelleher

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deep model A type of neural network containing multiple hidden layers.

 

model worker An exemplary, productive labourer. Also 'udarnik', 'shock worker', 'Stakhanovite' etc. An aspirational prototype of people of the future in Communist states.

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DEEP MODEL WORKER is a radical journey through the underbelly of artificial intelligence, centring labour and the increasing augmentation of human life and art. In it:

 

~Crash Ensemble duet with their AI counterparts, birthed from a neural network trained on the CrashLands album. That record’s copyrighted original work by contemporary composers is reimagined here, not as direct samples, but entirely new audio produced by the neural network’s unsupervised deep learning.

 

~~AI-generated images of people that ‘do not exist’, authentic fake subjects, dream in hyperreality.

 

~~~Real-world characters working in tech, soon to be replaced entirely by AI, speak of their precarious role in the mode of production.

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~~~~AI replacements for supermarket labour express sympathy with their dwindling human coworkers.