Performance Line-Up Announced for New York Live Arts 2019 Live Ideas Festival

Running from May 8th-12th, 2019, New York Live Arts presents Live Ideas--its annual humanities festival of arts and ideas. This year Live Ideas 2019 - AI: Are You Brave Enough for The Brave New World? will offer five days of activity designed to imagine the future and understand the current conversation surrounding Artificial Intelligence. Programming includes thought provoking public forums, a HACK-ART-THON, workshops and classes for children and adults, and live performances in the studio, theater, and lobby gallery that are built around Artificial Intelligence.

Opening the festival on May 8th at 6pm is the Keynote/Performance What is AI?, a lecture in the form of a performance and vice versa, giving an overview on the past, present, and future of AI. Delivered by a cast of scientists, technologists, artists and performers, the evening features composer and vocalist Nick Hallett; professor of digital journalism at NYU and author of Artificial Unintelligence Meredith Broussard; Hip hop, spoken word and theatre artist Baba Israel; New Yorker staff writer, author and humorist Patricia Marx; and drag performance artist Ragamuffin. Hallett, Israel, and Ragamuffin will be premiering original work.

Headlining the mainstage of this year's festival will be the New York City premiere ofdiscrete figures 2019--a collaboration between Rhizomatiks Research, ELEVENPLAY, and American media artist Kyle McDonald. May 8th-11th at 8:30pm, discrete figures 2019 features five female dancers executing choreography with machine learning technology. In a quest for a new palette of movement, the stage design creates an interactivity between the five performers, drones, and Artificial Intelligence, transcending the limits of conventional human subjectivity and emotional expression. Drawing upon the inspiration of mathematician Alan Turing, this expansive multidisciplinary collaboration probes the circuitry connecting the corporeal to the cognitive, questioning the very essence of humanity and machine. There will be a Stay Late Conversation with the artists following the performance on May 10th.

On May 9th at 9pm in the Live Arts studio, renowned New York based composer/performer/improvisor/producer Yuka C. Honda presents Rational Numbers: Music and AI, featuring experiments with AI technology as a creative tool. This is a co-presentation with Music Community Lab, a volunteer-run not-for-profit based in New York City. Over the past six years they have organized over 60 events supporting music research, experimentation, education and creation by bringing communities together to foster collaboration, productivity and the exchange of ideas.

In the studio on May 10th from 9pm-12am the artist collaborative LiveCode.NYChosts an Algorave--a Livecode performance where the instruments of choice are the computer languages that each performer has either mastered or created to express their artistic ideas, featuring Scorpion Mouse, CIBO + Ulysses, Popple, Colonel Panix + nom de nom, ioxi + Zach Krall, and Codie. Musical performances vary from ambient pieces, to melodies with danceable beats, to experimental sounds and polyrhythms. Music is accompanied by visualizations as well, sometimes programmed by the musician, sometimes programmed by a separate visual artist. LiveCode.NYC has been on the cutting edge of the global Algorave movement and is an inclusive organization open to anyone interested in learning and participating in the art form.

Evenings of May 8th-11th will feature a free 10 minute See Sound Pop-Up Performance in the Live Arts lobby gallery. Created by Rama Allen and the creative team at The Mill, a different singer/vocalist will perform every night in See Sound; a generative artwork experience that creates sound sculptures based on the human voice. Each user has access to a microphone and hardware interface. Triggering different visual behaviors within the music visualizer based on experimentation, each user leaves with their own bespoke sound sculpture. The resulting media can be sent to each user immediately afterwards.

The 2019 Live Ideas Festival is generously supported by Google, with additional support from the Ace Hotel Humanities New York, Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, and numerous departments at Carnegie Mellon University.