Jonathan Reus

In Search of Good Ancestors / Ahnen in Arbeit is a year-long experiment in generative radio commissioned by CTM Festival Berlin and Deutschlandfunk Kultur. An artificial BroadCaster, a bespoke voice synthesis system utilizing current deep learning techniques in voice synthesis and style transfer shifts through speech and song, words and soundscapes, reading through text as if tracing slowly over the letters, probing them and unsettling them. The broadcast begins modestly and develops throughout the year, intervened upon by a series of public workshops held with experimental publishing collective Varia, where participants collectively read, comment, and annotate the broadcaster’s predictions. This process of reparative reading, stewarding, and giving new reference points and expressive vocal abilities and personages to the broadcaster is in the interest of directing the algorithmic process towards one of many preferable futures, and to collectively work on building a machine learning system to include the presence of many individuals.

A hybrid digital/performance project exploring the cultural and geographical pathways of musical knowledge. Beginning with the American banjo family, and the oldest existing banjo of the Americas, the Surinamese “creole bania.” This becomes a starting point for seeking out a living network of musicians, instrument-makers, and tradition-bearers. The project has two parts, 1) live performance collaborations on-site, and 2) an interactive software experience, gathering traces of these exchanges as music, text, and objects in the physical world digitized remotely. The experience will express a layered and flexible concept of heritage that validates the role of online encounters, while also recognizing their fragmentation and acknowledging the need for interpersonal exchange in building respect for the cultural histories we are entangled in, both by circumstance and by choice.

A Conversation with Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett at the End of History Two servers in a data center at the end of history attempt to create a conversation between Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett that never occurred. Two text-to-speech artificial intelligence models were trained on a set of publicly available recordings of the voices of Beckett and Feldman, the former being notorious for his refusal to be recorded. The collected voice recordings of Beckett especially are sparse, leading the algorithms to create abstract sounds that capture the cadence and timbre of the voices of the two artists, but fails to produce comprehensible speech. The machine reproductions of the voices of Feldman and Beckett attempt to speak from a text corpus including over 500 Amazon.com user reviews of the collected musical works of Feldman, and the collected novels and plays of Samuel Beckett.

The "theatrical" peculiarity of this project (and the basis of the artistic residency) lies precisely in having shifted the attention from the pure visual concert on the stage, with the performers on the laptop clearly visible, as it was originally born, to the spectator who at a distance , it "moves" between "clusters" of information generated by the algorithm, creating its own path. More data generates "knowledge", but the information in turn attracts other information, the aggregation process does not seem to end and the network becomes potentially infinite (or rather, ever-expanding) like the world. During the navigation that involves all the senses, the invisible performers "play" improvising, the codes, in turn actors of this theater "from afar" while the "director" is undoubtedly precisely the algorithm that governs them and that in fact , is generating them on the spot. It would be interesting to explore a further level: that of user interaction with codes not only to explore the world of algorithm but to modify sounds and generate new environments.

A collaboration with Joana Chicau, following from a shared interest in livecoding and real-time algorithmic performance. We research and develop performative techniques for in-situ dissections of machine learning algorithms. To better understand the habitual and fixed objects of machine learning as well as their terminologies, and provide counter-techniques for conditions of emergence and movement. In our processual approach, we aim to develop an online repository of terminology and techniques for a critical examination of the “anatomy” of learning and prediction processes, data corpus and models of machine learning algorithms. And explore, through performance practice, how such a toolkit can confront the idealized bodies of artificial intelligence.

The Reading Room is an event series dedicated to creating a community-oriented, public platform for encounters with contemporary ideas on art and society. At its core, the Reading Room series revolves around the reading of texts provided by invited guests – cultural theorists, philosophers and curators – who join our diverse community in an open discussion while providing insight, context and perspective on the topics at hand. The series stems from a belief that keeping a close connection to historical and emerging theories on art and culture is invaluable to artists. Especially in the 21st century, where theory, practice and social engagement in the arts seem to merge ever more seamlessly. The Reading Room’s curatorial and organizational team is Sissel Marie Tonn, Jonathan Reus and Flora Reznik. The program is produced by the Instrument Inventors Initiative and, since 2016, is hosted by Stroom Den Haag.

A performance for two percussionists who musically and physically deconstruct a line of original iMac G3 computers from full functionality down to individual parts and materials over the course of a minimum of 2 hours. It aims to challenge the linear narrative of technological progress and sensitize the viewers to the materiality of electronic devices, while also hinting at the labor conditions of the assembly factories where these devices are made.

Using "vintage" iMac G3 computers as raw operating material, performers create a sonic and visual interpretation of the internal processes of the computer by hacking the electronics directly using fine-tipped sound amplifying probe instruments. An image of the computer desktop is projected, which takes on surreal and impressionistic qualities as malfunctions occur. Software routines are set into motion which translate into driving sonic polyrhythms, clicks and digital tones, as well as producing further visual dynamics within the failing and operationally confused system.

A choreographic instrument for audience participants or two dancers and an intra-body radio transmission system. The departure point of the performance is the evolution of touch understood from multiple cultural and historical vantage points, as inspired by sensory historian Constance Classen’s The Book of Touch. A set of Victorian radio-transmission apparatuses built from polished steel and the remains of a discarded piano are used as the “stage” for a dance choreography which moves fluidly between modes of touch from the ritual to the everyday, from sensual to violent and conciliatory. The apparatuses use abandoned “body-transmission” information technology system developed in the mid-90’s by researcher-scientist Thomas Zimmerman. Research into Zimmerman’s original designs and patents served as a reference point for creating the technology needed to realize the work. The apparatuses thus also tap into a never-to-be-realized techno-scientific sensory history, one envisioned by Zimmerman, where touch and information-telecommunication would be unified. The apparatus transmits acoustic signals gathered in the space through a localized body-channel radio system, through the dancers, from microphones to speakers placed in the space. The system creates a dynamic fluctuation of feedback loops, audible interference and acoustic resonances that directly reflect the movements of the dancers in relation to each other in the broadcast space above the platforms. The platforms are also presented as an interactive installation, whereby audience members interact with each other through sound, touch and movement when standing, sitting or interacting with the radio fields produced by the platforms.

The research institute Sensory Cartographies is an ongoing collaboration between myself and Sissel Marie Tonn. In this project we seek to explore extreme and information-rich sensory environments through the motions of biometric recordings. At the center of the project is the creation of worn instrumentations that attempt to address notions of collection, categorization and navigation from originating the in colonial “golden age” of botany, to the biometric measurement and monitoring technologies today.

The Intimate Earthquake Archive overlays the digital siesmic archive of the KNMI, marked by its specific modes of collection, with a tactile archive, one which can only be accessed through the body of the visitor through a specially designed wearable interface with embedded surface and bone conduction transducers. The artists have chosen 12 earthquakes of socio-political significance from the Groningen gas fields to be part of this sensory archive, and have transformed these data sets into vibratory compositions that move move across the skin similarly to how the earthquakes moved across the land, intended to inspire a ‘deep listening’ experience within the body.

The herbarium in Funchal holds a collection of preserved plant specimins and taxidermized animals dating back to the 16th century, and can be understood to be a fingerprint of the history of colonization and acclimatization of plant species from colonial travels that passed through the island. This exhibition places documentation of our own biometric data recorded while traversing some of the most radical climates of the island, in the cloud forests of the upper altitudes. We wished to trace a line from the Linnaean taxonomy system of the 18th century to contemporary smart devices and surveillance technologies, questioning the certainty that science can deliver ultimate truths about nature through collection and categorization. The project Sensory Cartographies is an ongoing collaboration between myself and Sissel Marie Tonn. In this project we seek to explore extreme and information-rich sensory environments through the motions of biometric recordings. At the center of the project is the creation of worn instrumentations that attempt to address notions of collection, categorization and navigation from originating the in colonial “golden age” of botany, to the biometric measurement and monitoring technologies today.