AI music often sounds very familiar, because it is limited to its creators’ musical horizon. In the third essay of our «Sonic Vignettes» special, Rolf Großmann asks what happens if one liberated AI «ears» from the constraints of human sensations?

Philipp Rhensius meditates on Amanda Melissa Baggs’ communication with every aspect of their environment, via Eden Tinto Collins’ and and Giuliano Ponturo’s film «CoNEC» and his own childhood experiences.

Digital worlds create disembodied experiences. But what if our avatars could touch, taste, and smell? An essay inspired by a new performance from IOKOI, who attempts to oppose disembodiment with a multi-sensory approach.

Biographies consist of the actual life one lived, and of the virtual life that one could have lived. Yet, the life of Turkish composer İlhan Mimaroğlu, depicted in the film «Mimaroğlu: The Robinson of Manhattan Island», shows that not every virtual promise is fulfilled.

Every story results from the tension between form and content. But these rarely deviate from the usual. In the film «Dazzle Lights», the viewer is confronted with a radical blurring. Read an essay about the possibilities of surreal and nonlinear narrative.

Artists often live a precarious life in which work rules everything. Their constant urge to be productive has intensified further in the pandemic. In this essay, our writer finds relief in the protagonist of the film «Les Contes Du Cockatoo», who refuses to finish projects.

North Indian classical music was once exclusively performed for the upper class. Today, it is for everyone, yet it is faced with the demands of the 21^st century: The constant imperative to self-promote.