Shaky Savine & Doing Nothing with AI

Armin Sanayei’s composition “Shaky Savine” was created to perform in dialogue with Emanuel Gollob’s neuroreactive installation “Doing Nothing With AI”. The violin solo piece premiered by the gifted hands of Jacobo Hernández Enríquez as part of the Presenza Assente concert in REAKTOR’s main hall in July 2020.

An electroencephalography (EEG) cap streams the musician’s EEG waves. The resulting data forms the basis for the AI’s action. The modular composition “Shaky Savine” gives the interpreter the freedom to improvise based on their perception, while an electroencephalography (EEG) cap streams the musician’s brain activity. Based on this real-time feedback, artificial intelligence decides on the next movements of the installation. In this way, the work only emerges in the interplay of composition, algorithm, and improvisation. The music and the movement interactively create each other.

This musical dialogue between man and machine was recorded by the director and artist Anna Mitterer. “Shaky Savine & Doing Nothing with AI” was created in a co-production between the Ensemble Reconsil and REAKTOR.

 
More information on the embedded aesthetic human-machine-interaction, the neuroaesthetics topic of bottom-up perception as well as the utilization of EEG-feed generative adversarial networks for interactive art within the different “Doing Nothing with AI” iterations can be found in this open access publication by myself, Magdalena Mayer, and Johannes Braumann: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3430524.3440647

Movie 
Anna Mitterer | director & cut 
Philipp Windsor-Topolsky | camera & light 
Tobias Aschermann | focus puller & DIT & colour grading 
Aram Baronian | dolly grip 

Music
Armin Sanayei | composition 
Jacobo Hernández Enríquez | violin 
Alexander Yannilos | recording & sound mastering 

Installation 
Emanuel Gollob – design, concept & research 
Magdalena May – concept & research 
Advice and support | Johannes Braumann – Laboratory for Creative Robotics | Dr. Orkan Attila Akgün – Neuroscientist | Magdalena Akantisz & Pia Plankensteiner – Graphic Design 
Hardware | KUKA industrial robots | Enobio EEG Cap from Neuroelectrics
Software | TF Keras GAN ML | vvvv gamma | mxAutomation | KUKA|prc
Acknowledgements | Supported by Vienna Business Agency | Parts of this iteration were produced at the Design Investigations Studio of the University of Applied Arts Vienna