This year’s Gray Area Festival features a special performance by Los Angeles band YACHT who will perform their distinctive electro-pop made in collaboration with artificial intelligence, to AI-generated visuals. Before that, on Thursday, September 29, we will be showing their feature documentary, The Computer Accent, an exploration of the artists’ work with the intersection of art, technology, and human intuition. Using a “scotched-taped together” assortment of tools, YACHT invites artificial intelligence to co-create the melodic patterns and lyrics of their seventh album, putting both the band and the audience’s notions of artistic authenticity to the test. YACHT began in 2002, as Young Americans Challenging High Technology, but the group is neither young nor all-American. For 20 years, Jona Bechtolt, Claire L. Evans and Robert Kieswetter have shape-shifted through multiple lineups and musical styles, releasing albums internationally on DFA Records and Downtown Records. YACHT have created and sold unplayable compact discs, published a philosophical handbook, built a 62-foot video installation, designed an eyewear collection, created a fragrance, campaigned against NSA surveillance, programmed large-scale public art activations, and composed an album in collaboration with machine learning researchers and tools. Their seventh album, Chain Tripping, was nominated for a GRAMMY Award in 2020 for Best Immersive Audio Album.

Pierce Warnecke is sound and video artist from the US, based in Europe for over a decade. He works equally in the sonic and visual domains via performances, installations and compositions. In addition to his solo works he collaborates with Frank Bretschneider, Matthew Biederman Keith Fullerton Whitman and more. He has received supporting grants from Germany, Canada, the European Union and France. He currently works as a professor at Berklee Valencia, Spain. Pierce has presented his works in many international festivals and spaces, such as MUTEK, ZKM, Sonic Acts, KW Institut Berlin, CTM Festival, Elektra, NEMO and more. He has released music on raster-media and Room40 and is represented by CTM’s DISK Agency.  

Matthew Biederman works across media and milieus, architectures and systems, communities and continents since 1990. He creates works where light, space, and sound reflect on the intricacies of perception. Since 2008 he is a co-founder of Arctic Perspective Initiative, with Marko Peljhan working on projects throughout the circumpolar region. Biederman was the recipient of the Bay Area Artist Award by New Langton Arts, First Place at Slovenia’s Break21. He has served as artist-in-residence at a variety of institutions and institutes, including the Iberian Nanosystems Laboratory, CMU’s CREATE lab, the Wave Farm and many more. His work has been featured at Lyon Bienniale, Istanbul Design Bienniale, The Tokyo Museum of Photography, ELEKTRA, MUTEK, Montreal Bienniale (CA), Bienniale of Digital Art (CA), SCAPE Bienniale (NZ) and the Moscow Biennale (RU), among many others.

Hip-hop producer & DJ Idea Unsound and award-winning instrumentalist Q-Jin join forces as IQ to bring an electro-acoustic performance the likes never before seen. Blending classical Chinese zither with futuristic sound design, IQ is a futuristic story of east-meets-west. Idea Unsound uses visual software to construct beautiful visual FXs live with the electrifying addition of Q-Jin’s amplified zither. QJin is an award-winning instrumentalist and recording artist who blends traditional Chinese instrumentation with modern sound design and production techniques via Ableton Live and bespoke hardware. She has been playing Guzheng since the age of eight and has been featured in various AAA game soundtracks, including having performed as a soloist for the Mortal Kombat 11 intro theme. Idea Unsound is a left-field hip hop producer & DJ that mixes broken beats, futuristic vocal chops with a melodic, dubstep palette. His musical style is strongly influenced by his classical training, his love for science and technology, and his roots in dance music. His sound has been described as ‘jazz-inspired electronic music with a futuristic twist’.