Patricia Auchterlonie, a singer who has performed at the Royal Opera House, was listening to a version of herself. "The first portion of the track was somewhat straightforward singing that really sounded like me, which was quite eerie," she says. "And then all of a sudden it does this... what I would describe as almost like a bird call, which is very high and very weird and quite guttural." She hadn't ever made that noise before, though now she can.
The version of herself that Auchterlonie was listening to was produced by artificial intelligence; it was made by Harry Yeff, a beatboxer she is working with at the festival, who feeds recordings to AI and uses that process to discover new sounds he might be able to make. Auchterlonie is one of a number of practitioners taking part in an upcoming event at the Royal Opera House, RBO/SHIFT, that aims to explore how opera and artificial intelligence can interact.
