Unsound announces “Artificially Intelligent Artistic Director” for 2023 festival alongside DADA theme
"Music festivals… often already look like they were created with algorithms, but we've been training our AIAD to give bizarre advice related to programming formats," Unsound codirector Gosia Płysa said
Unsound has revealed the theme for its 2023 festival, plus a new curator.
The experimental Kraków festival, which will run from 1st October through the 8th, will build its programme under the theme "DADA", in reference to the Dada movement founded in 1915 during World War II. It "rejected ideas of progress, logic and rationality in favour of nonsense, outrage and radicalism," according to Unsound's announcement, which the festival will "riff on" throughout its 21st edition across music, visual art, sound, performance and discourse events.
"This is not really about looking, or listening, backwards to the past for clues," Unsound cofounder Mat Schulz said. "We want to think about Dada in the present, and with an ear to the future, in which non-human agency is increasingly prevalent.
For the first time, the experimental Kraków festival will have an "Artificially Intelligent Artistic Director" (AIAD) on its curation team. "AIAD is part of this [theme]", Schulz said, "an absurdist provocation, rather than a techno-utopian statement."
"We began developing the concept of AIAD before the pandemic", Unsound codirector Gosia Płysa said. "Music festivals — like much human behavior in general — often already look like they were created with algorithms, but we've been training our AIAD to give bizarre advice related to programming formats, and to inspire the humans in our team to make more playful or even crazy decisions. Whether we follow the advice is another thing, but that's also true of other collaborators. We don't always agree."
Find more information on AIAD and its open call for music and performance acts for its "(In)tervention" series, as well as Unsound's submissions for discourse programming here. Submissions are due by 1st April.
Last year marked Unsound's 20th anniversary, which operated with the celebratory "Bubbles" theme, and was its first year outside of longtime venue Hotel Forum.
See AIAD's announcement post on Instagram.
