We’re a political, feminist, noise and AI-inspired, electronic sorta-surf rock band composed of women and AIs that assist in creating usable content from which we mold our music and visuals. We begin by invoking one another through Zoom and play skull theremins while reading GPT2 & GPT3 (Machine Learning) generated dialogue. In our own words:

Margaret: We created an experience that transcends academic contexts, with a more punk aesthetic with a real beat. The performance swerved between the avant-garde and a Bond theme song for a movie set in the ocean of the future. To increase our telepresence we each had an identical golden rotten luck die, rolled to determine performance techniques including short barks, tonal honks, grunts, growls, roars, moans, and pup contact calls.

Sophia: Our performance was a sonic, visual, and experiential net, capturing aspects of our collective consciousness (and subconsciousness) regarding the 2020 experience. Music-making mediated by algorithms and network errors, conversations interrupted by Zoom, visuals glitched by our devices—we were isolated yet connected, cyborg yet symbiotic, making noise in an elevated reality.

Susie: Our program began before it began, an amalgamation and transmutation of assets offered by the SEAL We five, through shared words, golden dice, and a prism of frequency, invoked one another to activate a portal of boxes within boxes. We were observed and connected across lay/latency lines, stitching a tapestry of sight and sound…for 35 minutes life was less lonely for this ghost in the machine.

Ria: Using live feeds found on the interwebs of sea creatures and ocean beds, I created our visual landscapes and colourfields, processed through layers of algorithmic manipulations. Our futuristic virtual performance came together seamlessly as a sum of parts worked on remotely, collectively, and independently; reflecting the fractured consciousness of 2020’s lockdown online life, for humans observing oceans and each other alike.

Sofy: We summoned each other through cyberspace and began invoking the spirit of the SEALS by reciting the words provided by the GPT3, then improvised over our own music that we previously put together, asynchronously sending files and sounds to each other through the interwebs. Our improvisation was asynchronous too; being in different timezones with Zoom lags. We’ll never know exactly what anyone experienced in their own Covid bubble.