ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: MESS in Conversation with Monica Lim

Navigating creativity and crisis.

Electronic music has always been a future focussed form. Reading synth manuals from the late 1960’s through to the late 1980’s is like reading a series of hyperbolic utopian manifestos. Statements like “you can’t make the music of the past with this machine – you can only make the music of the future” abound. There was fear back then, amongst more traditional music circles, that electronic musical instruments would replace musicians completely. Of course they did not.

What we face now with the ever growing presence of artificial intelligence in every aspect of music production is a perhaps even greater existential threat to music as we know it. At the very least it presents us with a crisis of authenticity that calls into question the very function of music in our society. In this conversation MESS turn to one of Melbourne / Naarm’s most interesting composers and performers Monica Lim and delve into her creative deployment of AI adjacent technologies. Monica explores AI’s potential to create improvising partners and inform responses to the gestural in the performance and composition of electronic music. Rather than trying to replace humans with this technology Monica aims to extend and elevate the art form that she loves – music.

Join MESS for a discussion on the knife’s edge of this controversial new creative frontier.

The MESS in Conversation series is supported by the City of Melbourne Multiyear Arts Grants.