»I think machines might have personalities just because we anthropomorphize them.«

You’re all interested in building and inventing.  Where do you think this interest came from? How did you go about learning the necessary skills?

Erin Lee Hong (ELH): I like to browse through books or the internet or other works to learn, for example, how a certain circuit or the code of a mini-computer like Raspberry Pi works. And the other half is experimenting on my own. Like, how do I steer something in a certain direction, and how does the result sound? Do the instruments react in unexpected ways when the frequencies or the resonance in the room changes? The ideas behind my work are related to my cultural background as well, ideas of displacement or resonance.

Ioana Vreme Moser (IVM): In my case I think it really comes from the culture that I grew up in. I'm Romanian and  grew up in a rural setting with a lot of improvised machines around me. Machines were very much tangled up with humans. This was something that inspired me to learn very early how to build my own devices. But I also taught myself how to build and engineer these instruments. But I'm also self-taught. I taught myself how to build and engineer these instruments.

Do you have an example of one of these self-built machines that were around during your childhood?

IVM: For instance there is this kind of washing machine. It's a circular wooden barrel that is put into a river. The power of the river is directed to create a vortex and swirl your clothes. This element I later found in other technologies. I also work with these elements, like creating swirls through fluid mechanics. It was inspiring to see all these mechanisms that direct natural forces to create motion and sounds.

Hye Young Sin (HYS): For me, it’s not that different. Whenever I go to concerts or exhibitions and find something interesting, I ask the artists directly. And they usually seem very happy to share. I'm also very happy to explain what I'm using or how I built it. I like sharing this kind of information and learning from one another.

All of you invite the audience to get into some kind of emotional relationship with the technology you are using. Erin, you for example built a little creature that looks like a fuzzy animal made of a microphone wind shield. You then asked the audience to give it a name which was  recorded by a Raspberry Pi inside of it. Do you think that machines have personalities?

IVM: The way I see this is through the idea of object memory. I see objects as vessels for human interactions. They embody the history of how they were interacted with. Computers, in turn, are part of a lineage of technologies created from the desire to understand ourselves and the universe around us. For example the astrolabe, this Chinese invention that mapped the sky, or Persian water clocks. These are kind of the first computers. And then they developed into these complex machines that are kind of unrecognizable because they’ve lost their original purpose as tools...I'm trying to figure out how to position these pieces of hardware.

ELH: I think machines might have personalities just because we anthropomorphize them. It's like with birds: If I see birds I think of them as free, and that reminds me of my human concepts, which are kind of reflected back at me. So from that perspective, it’s interesting to think that machines have some kind of personality.

What about you, Hye? In your installations you work with little motors that resemble plants or insect-like creatures. Do they have personalities?

HYS: I don’t think they have personalities, but they might have characteristics. I feel the word personality is already human-centered. However, during the working process, I really feel that materials have something like agency and are not just passive things.  They have their own behaviours that I can’t fully control. I try to reveal this aspect in my work by creating situations in which objects can generate their own sound or movement.

Many people draw a distinction between the natural and the synthetic and assign them different values. For example natural cosmetics are perceived as healthier or of better quality, and when thinking of a musical instrument, many probably still picture a violin or a trumpet rather than a synthesizer. For example, natural cosmetics are perceived as healthier or of better quality, and also with music there is still the perception that music coming from an acoustic instrument is of higher value than a synthetic sound source. How do the natural and the synthetic relate to each other in your work?

IVM: I don't see these borders so clearly because electronics are also made from minerals and ceramic and materials that are natural, but miniaturized, processed and lab-grown. A lot of my works deal with where these materials come from. What does it mean to mine for a semiconductor? Or to grow a crystal that becomes a transistor? So for me, this question of materiality is quite important, especially in terms of toxicity. The material I choose is part of the story.

ELH: In my work I do distinguish between the natural and synthetic, but I try to aim for somewhere in the middle. For example, I collect organic materials and then make them somehow sound synthetic, or the other way around. If I'm using a transducer, I'm always trying to integrate natural materials like metal, glass or plastic. Because the harmonizing between two different fields is really interesting and the gap offers so many different possibilities.

Can you describe what is the difference between a natural sound and a synthetic sound?

HYS: In my work I tend to blur the line between what we consider natural and what is synthetic. That's one of the points of my “Plastic Garden” series. These works are not an imitation of nature, but each is a garden in itself — a garden composed entirely of objects. I have the feeling that at some point in human history, these objects will argue that they are nature, as they have already started to take over. For the sound, I worked with recordings downloaded from BBC radio such as cowbells or parrots. They are all selected, recorded, edited by humans. Can we still say they are natural sounds? I'm quite doubtful.

IVM: In my work, I view the synthetic as something that will eventually become part of the geological layers of earth. All these things that we keep building, like instruments, but also the technologies we develop, our trash, it starts to pile up and then it becomes part of the earth's geology. We will just be one of the layers amongst many others. We will disappear. So you say, what is natural? What is artificial? While in the end everything is made from the earth. And when everything returns to the earth, there is no added matter. But we as humans, we need this kind of differentiation so that we can separate ourselves from machines. So we can say, this is the machine and I am the human. I'm natural and this is not natural. And maybe this is a necessary distinction, to maintain our sanity..

When it comes to technological progress, one sometimes gets the impression that technology is advancing faster than we can reflect on what that means for our lives. In the context of science, we sometimes talk of the limits of research. Are there also limits to your artistic research?

IVM: In my work the limits are not about the technology because I work with very old technology. But there arey conceptual limits. There's a limit to how I position the work in a political context. I always need to make sure that I address the topics with nuance.  

HYS: There are also limits to our resources, such as money. Recently I have been writing applications and there are so many open calls focusing on AI or on the relationship between nature, technology and humans. They expect new ideas, but often they already seem to have their own answers. They offer open formats, but then they constrain the overall approach. I imagine that many artists, including myself, adjust our ideas or visions slightly in order to fit their criteria. This way of recruiting art is very frustrating, especially when they have big resources like funding, strong institutions, workshops or other programmes, but a very narrow and short-sighted vision.

Erin and Hye, you are from South Korea, Ioana is from Romania and you’re all based in Germany now. Technological progress is taking place in these countries in very different ways and at different paces. How does your experience from your home countries differ from your experience living in Germany?

HYS: It's very different. When I first moved to Germany ten years ago, I had to print all the documents and bring them in-person to the migration offices. This was really hard to imagine in Seoul. It's all digital there and you can do everything on your mobile phone. These days, in Germany, you can get a Termin through an online calendar, but it's really not enough. Also, in our daily life, there are delivery services, but compared to where I grew up, there are a lot less. In South Korea, systems that connect people beyond physical stores are very common. Online delivery and digital connectivity are familiar parts of everyday life.

ELH: But this creates a generational gap as well. It's hard to find stores where customers can talk to humans. We have machines taking all the orders and stuff. When I was living in Germany for some years and went back just to visit, I could feel that things are growing and changing fast.

IVM: Romania was in a dictatorship for a long time. After the revolution of 1989 and Romania’s integration into the European Union, it’s economy has been rising. Then the wall came down and since  integrating into the European Union, its economy has been rising. For instance, Romania has the fastest internet speed in Europe. It's like the Silicon Valley of Europe; it's where all the hackers are because somehow everything is lacking. It developed this really big DIY culture because of scarcity, because of the time under Ceausescu's regime. I guess poverty is also creating this creative incentive to find ways to do what you need with what you have. It's definitely more developed when it comes to the digital realm compared to Germany. The trains are very old but the websites work.

Many people are worried these days about their jobs due to AI. Are you worried as well?

IVM: For me, no. First of all, it's not yet intelligent. It's a language model. For now it only recycles ideas. You can input my works and ask it to make a new work, but I'm quite sure that it's going to just turn out bullshit. So I'm not worried. I think we have actually a lot of work to do now.

HYS: And we are all growing over time. We're constantly changing. I think AI cannot fully follow because even we ourselves have no idea how and where to grow, which direction, to what extent. No one knows. Which means AI also has no idea.

IVM: The models we have available now are being primarily developed for the military, like many of the technologies we have. They're extremely biased as well. They're built to think in a specific way. So I don't see how you can come up with critical ideas from such models that are created by the people that cause our societal problems.  Art needs to challenge this.

This article was produced in collaboration with NOIES –  Journal for new and experimental music in NRW.