In Search of Good Ancestors / Ahnen in Arbeit is a year-long experiment in generative radio.
An artificial BroadCaster, utilizing current deep learning techniques in voice synthesis shifts through speech and song, words and soundscapes. The BroadCaster performs using deep learning algorithms that predict future words from past contexts. Beginning with Jonas Salk’s essay “Are we being Good Ancestors?”, the BroadCaster tries to continue the conversation indefinitely.
Ideas of long-term thinking, wrapped up in human activities of prediction, risk analysis, and memory happen at many levels of human society and individual consciousness. How do we navigate the long-term future we are a small part of? Please submit your own thoughts about what it means to be a good ancestor and it will be added to the BroadCaster's learning.
Throughout the year there will be a series of three workshops meant to collectively teach and reshape the BroadCaster's words and voices.
The BroadCaster began speaking on January 28, 2022 and has been speaking for 1165 days 08h 52m 22s
News & Public Events
Mar 31 2023 : 00:05 UTC+1 (and free to listen thereafter)
(Radio Silence) Seeking Truth Seeking. We bid farewell to a year long broadcast with a ritual of voices. An improvised performance between the Jonathan Reus, the artificial Broadcaster, and vocalists Faye Houston, Jo Bramli and Kassia Zermo, this programme will be played on German Public Radio just after midnight on March 30th to coincide with radio silence.Mar 24 2023 : 12:45 UTC
(Mozilla Festival) Many Voices: Towards a shared vocal practice between humans and machinesTogether with Eleni Ikoniadou we have a fun and light session around possibilities of rethinking voice through collectivity in artistic practice. The session will include a short discussion of In Search of Good Ancestors, as well as Eleni's album project Future Chorus. The session is curated by Sophia Bazile as part of the AI Cosmologies track of Mozilla Festival.Dec 10 2022 : 12:00-17:00 UTC+1
(Workshop) Remnants of Future Voices. In this workshop we will explore ancestral cosmology through the figure of the clone in artificial voice technologies. The workshop will experiment with artistic approaches to future and past-oriented dialogues using voice avatars of ourselves and others, considering the implications of creating a clone that may speak to generations beyond our own lifetime and say things we have never said. This workshop is crafted in collaboration with Angeliki Diakrousi of Varia.Oct 8 2022
In Search of Good Ancestors / Ahnen in Arbeit published in the Association for Computing Machinery.Sept 22 2022
(Workshop) Ancestral Sounds. A workshop exploring ancestral cosmologies of voice data within the Critical Inquiry Lab of the Design Academy Eindhoven.May 27 2022 : 14:00-17:00 UTC+1
(Workshop) An (in)audible chorus. In this second workshop we will explore ideas of audibility in relation to voice synthesis and text-to-speech AI systems, to consider the perceptible and imperceptible voicings we might encode for future listeners. Through using our own voices, and collaborating with artificial ones, we will attempt to tease out the features and meanings of voice in the digital domain, and consider the audible sensibilities we may want to attune with, as we co-create a hybrid chorus. This workshop is crafted in collaboration with Eleni Ikoniadou and Varia.March 12 2022 : 14:00-17:00 UTC+1
(Workshop) Re-Reading / Re-Writing. The first workshop in a series of three. How would you like an artificial reader to read? What kind of memory is preserved in an algorithm? What knowledge, thoughts, feelings would you want to be a part of such processes, and what previous »machine learnings« could be refused? In collaboration with Varia.Feb 6 2022 : 00:05 UTC+1
KONTINUUM: Ahnen in Arbeit on Deutschlandfunk Kultur and ORF Ö1 Kunstradio. Deutschlandfunk Kultur and ORF Ö1 Kunstradio Austria have commissioned Anne Wellmer to create a 1-hour audio piece 'behind the scenes' about In Search of Good Ancestors. The programme mixes interviews, discussions and music into a radio collage about the work as it begins its journey.Feb 6 2022 : 18:00-19:30 UTC+1
Launch event at CTM Festival. Jonathan Chaim Reus in conversation with sound artist Eleni Ikoniadou. Together they discuss the ideas behind In Search of Good Ancestors - voices, oracles, future telling and ego death in becoming part of a dataset.