Data is an influential currency in today’s world. Everything from the environmental to the personal is categorized and visualized in the form of images, graphs, symbols and numbers that are widely considered as fact. Sonification is a musical technique that has quietly emerged over the past few decades as a way to explore the ever-evolving nature of data. The approach enables composers and sound designers to find novel ways to represent data as sound by drawing on various fields such as computer science, psychology, ethics, sound design and data mining, among others.
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In this community-focused event, Portrait XO demonstrates through an immersive 20-minute performance how sonification can reveal the relationship between AI and ecology. This event expands on themes from her presentations at this year’s CTM festival. Using HOLON’s immersive features, the artist will now stage environmental datasets from the United Nations' 17 Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) in which she observes how the exponential rise of AI and world temperature anomalies move in the same arc. In doing so, the event aims to create a space to gather offline and explore our relationship to technology and the world we live in.
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OPEN DISCUSSION

Following the performance, Portrait XO will lead an interactive session in which she discusses her artistic practice and invites participants to engage with questions, asking:

- How can artistic sonification ask questions on current data collection methods?
- How can creative practice help to raise awareness about the eco-social impact of AI?
- What could sustainable futures look like in the age of AI?