Semilla AI

Nominiert als Bestes Experiment

SEMILLA A.I. is a neural audio synthesizer based on the concept of seeding the latent space of a neural network. It experiments with the co-ownership of musician AI models shared for anyone to use. The deep learning algorithms in SEMILLA power the sound synthesis engine, a generative neural network based on the Variational Autoencoder architecture. The networks can learn the features and patterns within a big corpus of sound to synthesize new audio.
SEMILLA takes its name and iconography from the ancient Mayan numerical concept of the zero, which is represented by a seed glyph. Mayans were among the first cultures to represent the zero as a numerical and computational concept from which everything emerges. The main difference from Western thought is that the zero is potentiality, rather than nothingness. It is currently in development by Moisés Horta Valenzuela in Berlin.

Under his alias hexorcismos, he creates a unique connection between ancient and cutting-edge sound technologies, approached through the critical lens of decolonial theory, as well as his own experiences living in the context of the U.S.-Mexico border.

His work has been presented at Ars Electronica, MUTEK Festival, Transart Festival, MUTEK: AI Art Lab Montreal, Elektron Musik Studion, CTM Festival: Music Makers Hacklab, California Institute of the Arts, and the Royal Academy of Music Stockholm, among others.

His ongoing artistic research project 'SEMILLA A.I.' is a new AI music instrument developed with the goal of democratizing neural audio synthesis, focusing on augmenting rather than automating the musical process. His latest collaborative music album, 'MUTUALISMX: Becoming Sonic Networks', invites 12 Global Majority musicians to work with SEMILLA A.I. and explore the process of building an 'A.I Mutual' and the concept of 'sonic becoming'.

Moisés Horta Valenzuela just won the AI Newcomer Award 2023 by Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.

Moisés Horta Valenzuela (1988, he/him) is an autodidact sound artist, technologist and electronic musician from Tijuana, México, working in the fields of computer music, Artificial Intelligence and the history and politics of emerging digital technologies. As , he crafts an uncanny link between ancient and state-of-the-art sound technologies channeled through a critical decolonial theory lens in the context of contemporary electronic music and the sonic arts. His work has been presented in Ars Electronica, MUTEK México, Transart Festival, MUTEK: AI Art Lab Montréal, Elektron Musik Studion, CTM Festival: Music Makers Hacklab, among others. He is currently an artist in residence at Factory Berlin where he works on new compositions and sound art installations using machine learning while pursuing a Masters degree in Sound Studies and Sonic arts at the University of Arts Berlin.

Foto: Tiberio Sorvillo