Pianographique - The Köln Concert part 1, Keith Jarrett

In this new Pianographique project, Maki Namekawa and Cori O'Lan work on the legendary Köln Concert by am Keith Jarrett. On Sept.10th 2023 Maki Namekawa performed the closing concert of Ars Electronica 2023 and played all four parts of the concert.

Since I don't yet have a recording of Maki Namekawa's performance I have been using the original recording from Keith Jarret for this demo.

All of the images seen in the visualizations for this concert were created using generative AI programs: MidJourney, RunwayML, Stable Diffussion and are connected live to the music by digitally analyzing the sounds of the piano, synchronized with it.This is an attempt to transfer the dialogical principle of improvisation to the work with AI systems, as an experimental approach to the question of the anchor point of artistic creation.The starting point are long sessions with ChatGPT, “conversations” about the music of Keith Jarrett and his effect on listeners, and about the essence of improvisation. This gives rise to the so-called prompts with which the images are generated, several tens of thousands of images from which one must select in order to shape one‘s own ideas and guide the process of creation.The ambiguity about with whom or with what one is in dialog, with oneself, with a machine, with the enormous amounts of collected data and information and the world views they generate, on which these AI systems are built,is a dynamic that enriches the artistic process enormously. One always oscillates on the border between novelty and repetition, between originality and imitation. Thus, this cooperation with Maki Namekawa addresses the centralquestions of this year’s festival.