A special project realized by the Dutch institute Beeld en Geluid and Thunderboom Records. Archive material hits the dance floor with help of AI!
Dancing in the club to music made by a digital robot: that’ll be possible from this summer on. Beeld en Geluid and the Thunderboom Records Foundation are joining forces with WAIVE, a project in which artificial intelligence is used to create new musical samples with digital heritage. In this way, material from the past is given new meaning. The Mondriaan Fund supports the ambitions of both parties and has granted a subsidy for WAIVE.
Music and choreography
With the help of computer scientist and musician Arran Lyon, a smart sampler was built that can convert audio archives into musical samples. Artificial intelligence assesses the musicality of sounds and places them in a melodic sequence. This results in samples that can be used by DJs to make music. In addition, a vj application is being developed that can create live choreography based on visual archive material. The technologies are combined and deployed at events. There, both music and dance are generated by artificial intelligence. The collection of Beeld en Geluid serves as the source of the archive material.
Summer 2022
In the summer of 2022 the application will be ready for use on the dance floor. The smart sampler will then be made publicly available as a browser interface and can be used by everyone.
About Beeld en Geluid and Thunderboom Records
Beeld en Geluid is committed to enhancing everyone’s life in and with media by archiving, exploring and making explicit these media, with free thinking and action in words, images and sound as its primary goal. Thunderboom Records Foundation is dedicated to the socially responsible development of artificial intelligence for the music industry.