ULTIMATE EMOJI (2019-20)

ULTIMATE EMOJI (Albert Barqué-Duran) is a performance and an installation, Premièred at Mobile Week Barcelona (2019) and exhibited at Ars Electronica (2019) and at ZKM (2019), that uses an artificially-generated Emoji sculpture to reflect on how digital “memes” shape our present cultural values and understandings of our emotions. The sculpture exhibited is first generated by an Artificial Intelligence (A.I. – Machine Learning), then 3D-printed in a large-scale format, and finally painted classically during a live-show by the artist. The design and features of the ULTIMATE EMOJI are controlled by the data and metrics of people’s perceptions and emotions evoked by the specific urban space and location where the performance is currently taking place – Disseny Hub Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress 2019. In collaboration with The Social Dynamics team at Nokia Bell Labs Cambridge – UK (Aiello et al., 2016), this experimental aesthetics project uses innovative technology and recent scientific research on Computational Social Sciences to reflect on the impact of digital transformation in our society. A generative ambient music set, which is live-ensembled by the artist, creates a soundscape that gives context to the piece. The musical piece is also created using A.I. techniques and with a collection of sounds sampled from famous digital “memes”. Style, rhythm and scale depend on the movements of the artist during the performance, conditioning how the piece will sound like. ULTIMATE EMOJI is a cultural and artistic experience where the digital relationship and interactions between a human community and its environment is adaptive, coherent and in harmony.