“MUTUAL CONTROL” is a musical and visual performance that takes the audience into a space where the boundaries between reality and artificial intelligence are complex. The visuals including a virtual android singer on a screen are interacted in real-time with a piano and synthesizer played by Keiichiro Shibuya. The virtual android’s face continues to mutate and evolve through AI. It even generates an electronic soundscape, inextricably linked to the acoustics played by the piano and synthesizer. As Keiichiro Shibuya hits the piano keys hard and twists the knobs on the synthesizer in the music played, the virtual android’s face is affected and distorted, as if under control. At the same time, the sound can be altered by the movements of the android on the screen. The visuals weave together complex elements from the voices of the virtual singer, Shibuya’s electronic sounds, images, and lighting to create a dynamic and ever-changing atmosphere. It is a metaphor for the impact of AI on humans and the interpenetrating dominance of AI and technology that feeds on, evolves, and even the thoughts and actions of humans.
Bio
Keiichiro Shibuya (b. 1973) is a composer, musician, and artist based in Tokyo and Paris. His work encompasses cutting-edge electronic music, piano solos, operas, film scores, and sound installations. He challenges the boundaries between humans and technology, and life and death. In 2012, Shibuya composed the Vocaloid opera “The End,“ starring Hatsune Miku with costumes by Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs, as a completely virtual opera, which premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and toured worldwide. (2013-2017) Since 2018, Shibuya has presented another opera called Android Opera “Scary Beauty“, with the android singing while conducting an orchestra. In 2021, he premiered a grand opera Super Angels, at the New National Theatre, Tokyo. In 2022, Shibuya premiered “MIRROR“ for the android opera, at Expo 2020 Dubai, in collaboration with Buddhist monks, an orchestra, and electronics. In June 2023, a full 70-minute version of this opera premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Furthermore, through many collaborations, he has performed at the Paris Opera and Palais de Tokyo, etc.
Yuma Kishi is an acclaimed Japanese contemporary artist using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create data-driven digital works and sculptures. Exhibited widely in Japan, his works have been featured by major brands such as Nike and publications such as Vogue. Borrowing motifs and symbols from the canons of both Western and Asian art history, his paintings distort our perceptions of the history of aesthetics. Using AI technology, his works evoke a sense of momentary dislocation in the viewer’s awareness of the self, creating a liminal space in between the here and now.
Credits
Concert for Piano, Electronics, Video, Lighting and Artificial Intelligence
Concept, Piano and Electronics: Keiichiro Shibuya
Video and AI programming: Yuma Kishi
