Ataya: HUMA Interdisciplinary Seminar Series
Speaker: Louis Chude-Sokei (Boston University, United States)
Project/Paper: Visit the Anarchic Artificial Intelligence album website and read the short text 'Anarchic Artificial Intelligence' by Louis Chude-Sokei, 2021 along with the interview The Algorithm Will Speak for You, CTM Festival, February 2021 and view this short video AAI / Anarchic Artificial Intelligence / With Mouse on Mars & Birds on Mars by Birds on Mars, 2021.
Bio: Louis Chude-Sokei is a writer and scholar whose books includes the award-winning, The Last Darky (2006), The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics (2016) and the acclaimed memoir, Floating in A Most Peculiar Way (2021). He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Black Scholar, one of the oldest and leading journals of Black Studies in the United States. Chude-Sokei has collaborated with numerous artists, performers, and programmers on projects focused on sound, music, race and technology. This includes legendary choreographer Bill T. Jones who is adapting sections of The Sound of Culture for performance, and iconic Berlin electronic artists Mouse on Mars with whom he has produced sound installations and the celebrated album 'Anarchic Artificial Intelligence' (2021). Chude-Sokei is founder of the international sonic art/archiving project, Echolocution, and is the lead artist/curator of 'Sometimes You Just Have to Give it Your Attention', a year-long sound art project in Nuremberg, Germany, focused on Nazi Party historical sites, for which he won the Kulturstiftung des Bundes Award from the German Federal Cultural Foundation. He is also a curator of Carnegie Hall’s 2022 Afrofuturism festival.
Topic: Writer and academic Louis Chude-Sokei was invited by electronic music duo Mouse on Mars to collaborate on an album and a series of installations. Using a bespoke algorithm that trained from datasets rooted in Chude-Sokei's work as well as his focus on Black Diaspora thought and vernacular culture, he generated a narrative inspired by his work on the parallels between discourses of race and technology. The algorithm then learned to speak in his voice and emerged as a distinct collaborator on the album and its related projects.
How Ataya works: One presenter and their work – in exchange with the audience. Each Ataya session engages with selected work by the presenter (a text, artwork, performance, even food). The presenter introduces their work and grounds the subsequent discussion with the participants. For best engagement, we recommend participants to view the work (made available in advance on our website) before the session. More on the Ataya Series
