A Music Report on the Human Species: Beyond Extinction

MIIIN

Holly Herndon

Electronic musician MIIIN seeks to warn a future intelligent being of the human race’s most perilous mistakes. Her composition includes a series of tracks that will be performed live, each pertaining to an event or catastrophe that has changed the course of history. Arguing that the extinction of the human race is inevitable, the Korean artist asks whether humankind’s biases and faults could still be repeated in a posthuman era governed by Artificial Intelligence.

MIIIN at Forecast Festival. Photo: Laura Fiorio.

For the musician and sound artist, the question isn’t whether or not humans will one day be extinct—in her view, it is a foreseeable future written into the evolutionary process. The question is rather to what extent the human race will still affect and shape the planet’s future, even in an era without humankind. With her mentor Holly Herndon, the musician has sought to answer this question by directly addressing the artificial intelligence she believes would take over after human extinction. “The AI being created by humans could quite easily inherit the faults, biases, prejudices, and other toxic characteristics that have led humans to this point,” she says. “We need to warn this future intelligence of the possibility of repeating the problems humankind has created and report on the present state of humanity.”

Canadian artist Sabrina Ratté created visuals for the composition. Courtesy of the artist.

Her composition A Music Report on the Human Species: Beyond Extinctionis a collection of tracks that sonically depict historical events and phenomena that have led to genocide and calamity. The composition is accompanied by a leaflet that will be handed out during the live performance at the Forecast Festival, with descriptions of the events that each of the tracks engages with. Electronic music for machine learning.

A Music Report on the Human Species: Beyond Extinction is supported by Koreanisches Kulturzentrum.