Drawing with Sound

Drawing with Sound (2017) is a durational performance translating the act of drawing into a series of sounds made in collaboration with composer Ben Heim During the performance, Ridler wears a specialized headset which recognises shapes as they are drawn, triggering a melodic series of falls and crescendos of overlapping and dissonant soprano voices controlled by the response of trained neural networks.

As the performance continues, the ritualistic act of drawing and erasing begins to echo the repetitive learning process of a neural network. Lines drawn at the start appear clearer and more precise with the backdrop of a clean, white surface. As the subsequent lines are drawn on top of eachother, their traces build up over time, causing disorder, and ultimately, entropy.

(Text by Anna Ridler)