LATENT SPACES_ Step inside a computer model 

A spatial sound installation by Vicky Clarke (SONAMB)

SEESAW Space basement, Manchester, 86 Princess Street, Manchester M1 6NG

Preview: Thursday 23rd October 6.30-9.30pm (eventbrite for tickets)

Exhibition Open: Friday 24th (10-5pm) & Saturday 25th & Sunday 26th (11-3.30pm) – No tickets required, showings run every half hour.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

We’re surrounded by invisible technological systems where machine learning and covert algorithms shape our everyday lives.

These systems can feel abstract and mythical in their invisible influence. But they impact our world in very real ways.

At the heart of these systems is latent space, a data dimension in a state of flux, where material becomes data, past meets future, and new machine languages emerge. 

How do we imagine these spaces? What if you could step inside an environment like this? What do they sound like? And what might they evoke in you? 

Latent Spaces is a sound installation that invites the audience to step inside the Aura Machine – an imaginary computational model combining spatial audio, sculpture and digital objects.

Once inside the machine’s latent space, the audience can experience a materiality in flow, where sonic echoes of past technological eras emerge, morph and fall apart.

Occupying a heritage textile building, the work layers a virtual, imaginary space over a real, physical space of industry. In doing so, it makes a connection between computational and industrial spaces as sites of constant flux. Both are places where meanings ‘become’, histories change and material holds memory.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE EXPERIENCE

Inside the Aura Machine, an industrial soundscape unfolds: Manchester millscapes meet rhythmic cotton machinery from Quarry Bank Mill, and the material sounds of electricity, glass and metal. These sounds – field recordings captured by the artist – make up the machine’s dataset, used to train an early lo-fi neural synthesis model called PRiSM SampleRNN, now itself a historical relic. 

Audiences will be immersed in the emerging machine language through a sonic composition of mill sounds and industrial history, and visual symbols (the Aura Machine icons) in the form of metal sculpture, cotton drapes and moving images.

WHY NOW?

​​We’re living in the era of latent space, a time when invisible systems are remaking our world, changing our society and impacting the climate. As new technologies emerge at speed, we must invent symbols and evolve language to make sense of these systems to understand their potential. 

Can we create our own myths and forge an alternative language? Latent Spaces sites our position in the current AI hype cycle, within a technological history of invention. Can we reclaim control and creatively reimagine these spaces more ethically and ecologically as slow, local and DIY?

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Vicky Clarke (aka SONAMB) is a sound and electronic media artist from Manchester, UK, whose work explores materiality, electrical phenomena and ritual. Latent Spaces is her first solo installation, and marks the third in a series of works exploring machine learning and musique concréte, Clarke’s research in this area began in 2019. through a British Council research trip to Russia and an artistic residency with NOVARS, University of Manchester in collaboration with PRiSM, Royal Northern College of Music. Here she developed methods of building custom datasets of her own recordings and explored what happens to the materiality of sound in neural networks to create ‘AURA MACHINE’, her live AV piece was recently released on LOL Editions label. This was followed by ‘NEURAL MATERIALS’, a Cyborg Soloist commission, from University of Holloway and UKRI, to develop a performance system for AI, sculpture and electronics. Latent Spaces draws on post industrial sounds from these projects including cotton mill machinery from Quarry Bank Mill where her father trained as an apprentice electrical engineer. 

During her research, Clarke became interested in latent space, with its unknowable qualities and language of ‘hidden layers.’ Drawn to the idea of ‘statistical alchemy’, she was fascinated by the sound world of neural synthesis, and the visual representations of latent space in Machine Learning text books. She began to imagine what it might be like to step inside. 

Notes on Technology Use

Clarke’s practice engages critically with emergent technologies, opening up systems through education and access, with an approach grounded in the lo-fi and DIY. Use of technology in the piece:

• On Authorship – All content is original material created by the artist, no dataset scraping
• On Training – Training took place locally (RNCM) in collaboration with Dr Christopher Melen
• Open Source Models – The machine learning models used in the piece are 

• StyleGAN(2019) for visuals: trained locally on a custom Techno-Symbolic dataset
• SampleRNN(2020) for sound: trained locally on a custom Post-Industrial dataset

SUPPORTERS

This work was made possible by Sound and Music’s In Motion programme. In Motion 2024 is supported by Arts Council England, Jerwood Foundation, Garrick Club Charitable Trust, PRS Foundation & Marchus Trust.

Sound and Music is a PRS Foundation Talent Development Network Partner supported by PPL UK.

With exhibition support from FutureEverything, as part of the Innovate UK-funded Cultural Accelerator programme.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Download the project information PDF

Access the press release folder for imagery and copy

Follow on Social Media – @sonamb__