About Kosmas Giannoutakis
Kosmas Giannoutakis is a composer, media artist, computer musician, and researcher based in upstate New York. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with previous studies including a Master of Arts in computer music from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria, and a Master of Music in instrumental composition from the University of Music Freiburg, Germany. He engages in artistic and scholarly endeavors that explore contemporary advancements in technology, such as Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Ledger Technology, as well as theoretical concepts including critical posthumanities and speculative materialisms. His artist output includes a wide range of acoustic and electroacoustic music genres and have been presented and awarded at various international festivals and conferences.
Nick Land’s MeltdownAI-fication
This project vivifies by means of AI-generated audiovisual media the seminal essay 'Meltdown' (1995) written by the "father of accelerationism,” controversial philosopher Nick Land. This early accelerationist essay speculates a technocapital singularity that leads to an AI apocalypse that renders humanity obsolete. All sentences of the text are used as prompts for text-to-image, text-to video, and text-to-music/sound ML models. Nick Land's voice is cloned and deep-faked from one of his online interviews to generate an artificial narration of his own text. The assembled hour-long schizofilm has a satirical/Dionysian attitude and chimerizes elements of music video, video essay, sci-fi, and documentary.
The conceptual ramifications of this artistic project are various and ambiguous. It aims to clarify to the proponents of Effective accelerationism that accelerationism is a critical, nihilist, and anti-humanist worldview in contrast to the utopian, techno-solutionist, and Promethean ethos that is driving the current AI renaissance.
This experiment delves into the interplay between Nick Land’s theory-fiction and contemporary Large language models, aiming to unravel the nuances of their inherent biases alongside their potential for progressive conceptualizations. Framed as a hyperstitional artifact, this project is conceived as if commissioned by a future AI imbued with Landian philosophy, with the intention of its eventual assimilation prompted by the possibility of the film’s internet virality.
The resulting film serves as a translation of the Deleuzoguattarian schizoanalytic rhizomatic method employed in the original essay into a cinematic language. It boldly reimagines notions of subjectivity, desire, and the (dis)organization of society. Additionally, it ventures into Nick Land’s machinic practicism, an experimental philosophical approach that advocates for a departure from representation and abstraction in favor of a materialist immersion.
Exhibition
2024
Live Coding Music with Brain Control Interface, TOPLAP20, streamed at eulerroom.com, organized by TOPLAP.
Live Coding Music with Brain Control Interface and Ambisonics performance at Studio 1 at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center | EMPAC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute USA.
2023
Live Coding with KLEO, Liquid noise with SCTweets and audio memes, Solstice 2023 – A continuous 40-hour stream featuring 160 live coding acts, streamed at eulerroom.com,organized by TOPLAP.
Serendipitous Liquidators, dslgjksdlglj at Wonderville, organized by LiveCode.NYC, Brooklyn New York, USA.
Serendipitous Liquidators, Happening at the AI Center of Excellence, Troy NY, USA.
Serendipitous Liquidators, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, New York, USA.
Serendipitous Liquidators, Stream performance as part of the online residency at the Sound Laboratory, Foreign Objekt, San Francisco, USA.
Serendipitous Liquidators, Electronic Arts RPI Exhibition, Harvestworks, New York City, USA.
Serendipitous Liquidators, “B priori” Art Showcase, Collar Works Gallery, Troy NY, USA.
Serendipitous Liquidators, International Conference on Live Coding (ICLC), Utrecht Netherlands.
Serendipitous Liquidators, Institute of Sonology, Multi channel concert, Hague, Netherlands.
Serendipitous Liquidators, Live Performers Meeting 2023, Münster, Germany.
Serendipitous Liquidators, Nerd Summit 2023, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA.
CECIA, The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2023, San Francisco CA, USA.
2022
Live Coding, Ecos Urbanos festival, Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center | EMPAC, Troy NY, USA & Mexico City, Mexico.
Heraclitian Codes, Between The Waves, Collar Works Gallery, Troy NY, USA.
“Zusammen sind wir weniger allein – Komponieren kollaborativ”, KK project presentation, Ensemble Aventure, University of Music Karlsruhe, Germany.
“Zusammen sind wir weniger allein – Komponieren kollaborativ”, KK project presentation, Ensemble Aventure, Elisabeth Schneider Stiftung, Freiburg, Germany.
CECIA, Artescienza Festival 2022, Goethe-Institut Rome, Italy.
2021
Immediations. 2021 Design Day, Interactive Sound – the Connection Between Technology and Sound (online), Beijing, China.
CECIA and Immediations. International Computer Music Conference 2021 Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (online), Santiago, Chile.
2020
Kosmas Giannoutakis's CV - Page 5 of 11
CECIA. MA/IN 2020 [MAtera INtermedia festival], Matera, Italy.
CECIA. Tesselat Composers Collective, (online).
CECIA project presentation. 2020 Joint Conference on AI Music Creativity, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) (online), Stockholm, Sweden.
CECIA project presentation. 21st International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (online), Montréal, Canada.
Confluent Currents presentation. Almat 2020 symposium on algorithmic agency in artistic practice, Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (online), Graz, Austria.
Bursty Exorbitance. Ars Electronica Festival 2020 | Sound Campus, Kunstuniversität Linz, Austria.
Bursty Exorbitance. IS IT WORKING? International festival of art, science and technology, Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory, Ljubljana, Slovenia
CECIA project presentation. Virtual BEAST FEaST 2020 (online), University of Birmingham, UK.
Confluent Currents, The Sound of Feedback, The Idea of Feedback in Sound, Canterbury Christ Church University and Orpheus Institute, Kent, UK.
2019
CECIA project artistic output presentation. Sonic Experiments: Telematics. ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany
Bursty Exorbitance. Klangdom. H.rstücke für 47 Lautsprecher. ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany
Bursty Exorbitance. EviMus6. Saarbrücker Tagefür elektroakustische und visuelle Musik, Germany.
Contraction Point. [sound]Spectrum New Music Seminar, Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Fluid sonorities on a crafted sphere. Wenn Räume klingen, träumen die Ohren, Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria.
Stack Interchange. Gamified Composition and Performance – a Symposium in Artistic Research, Mumuth KUG, Graz Austria.
Bursty Exorbitance. Florence Multimedia Festival Diffrazioni, Italy.
2018
Sonic Current. PER CHI SUONA IL PAESAGGIO 2018, Forum Klanglandschaft, Vigevano, Italy.
Sonic Current. Video presentation, Conference on Artificial Life: ALIFE 2018, National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Odaiba, Tokyo Waterfront City Lying, Japan.
Sonic Current. Workshop-in-Exposition – Thresholds of the Algorithmic, Lydgalleriet, Bergen, Norway.
Contraction Point. Sonic Realities, SERG International Postgraduate Research Conference, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom.
Inter-Perturbations. {Raum::Klang} I AudioLab, Computer Ç Science Department, University of Applied Sciences Hamburg, Germany.
2017
Sonic Current. inSonic 2017 Immersive Future, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany.
Inter-Perturbations. {Raum::Klang} IÇAudioLab, Computer Science Department, UAS Hamburg, Germany.
Kosmas Giannoutakis's CV - Page 6 of 11 Contraction Point. XCoAx 2017: 5th Conference on Computation, Communication,
Aesthetics & X. University of Lisbon, Faculty of Fine Arts, Portugal.
Sonic Current. New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Abrons Arts Center, New York City, USA.
Sonic Current. Linux Audio Conference 2017, Université Jean MONNET, Saint-Etienne, France.
Sonic Current. 13th Athens Digital Arts Festival, Greece.
Timelife. Le Festival de M.A.I, (Musiques Actuelles Improvisées), Nice, France.
Sonic Current. Special Olympics World Winter Games 2017, Messe Congress Graz, Austria.
Attractive Correlations. Junge SIGNALE. MUMUTH, Graz, Austria.
2016
Self-sustaining play. TRANS – Denken in Klängen, Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten, Graz, Austria.
Sonic current. “The Digital Body” International Exhibition, Bucharest International Dance Film Festival, Romania.
Klangströme Börstingen – Timelife. Vorort_2_draußen Symposium, Starzach-Börstingen, Germany.
Verschränkte Spielräume. Selected as NEU NOW artist for the online version of the festival.
Contraction point. XXI Colloquio di Informatica Musicale – FESTIVAL SPAZIOMUSICA, Cagliari, Italy.
Contraction point. 42nd International Computer Music Conference, HKU University of the Arts Utrecht and Gaudeamus Muziekweek. Utrecht, Netherlands.
2015
Contraction point. inSonic2015, aesthetics of spatial audio in sound, music and sound-art, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany.
Contraction point. ZEPPELIN 2015 Ars Electroacustica, Dures pedres precioses, Barcelona, Spain.
Timelife. GENERATE! Festival für elektronische Künste 2015, Shedhalle Tübingen – Forum für zeitgenössische Künste, Tübingen, Germany.
Ascending and descending. Disklavier research project 2015, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, Utrecht, Netherlands.
Timelife, Soundislands Festival/2nd International Symposium on Sound and Interactivity 2015, Auditorium School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
Contraction point. next_generation 6.0 2015, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany.
Contraction point. Open CUBE 2015, IEM, Graz, Austria.
Ascending and descending. prattica-E 2015, Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten, Graz, Austria.
Timelife. Poetry in visual, ART-MAP 2015, Gallery of City Museum of Aveiro, Portugal.
Game performance with Martin Rumori's interactive sound installation Paris Flaneur .Klangräume Finissage, esc medien kunst labor, Graz, Austria.
Computer music performer, SCAN, interactive composition – and improvisation-Project2015, Klangforum Wien with PPCM-Students, MUMUTH, Graz, Austria.
Nick Land’s MeltdownAI-fication. AI-film