The vision of a future archive, staffed by soulless machines, tasked with curating and categorising the myriad fragmented memories of human emotions – and becoming baffled by the task – is an artistic conceit that resonates deeply in 2024. With the onrush of AI-fuelled plugins, DAWs and all-out generative music engines, a machine-led future, scrutinising human art and emotional expression in a way such as this, seems almost inevitable.
For Stockholm-based artist Moonilena, this concept proved a fruitful starting point for her own creativity. On her new ambient album, Minnet, Moonilena – real name Marlena Salonen – harnessed a selection of tools across both hardware and software, to build a dark yet tantalising listening experience that wallowed in the space between signal processing theory, and human emotion.“I wanted to make a concept out of memory,” Marlena tells us.
