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Portrait XO (she/they) is an independent researcher and artist who creates musical and visual works with traditional and non-traditional methods. In collaboration with Dadabots, they won ‘Best Experiment’ award at VUT Indie Awards 2021, Eurovision AI Song Contest Jury Vote for ‘most creative use of AI’ in 2020. Her development into AI audiovisual art evolved through several artist residencies from NEW NOW FESTIVAL and BBA Gallery in 2021, and Factory Berlin x Sonar+D in 2020. She researches computational creativity, human-machine collaboration, and explores new formats & applications for forward-thinking art and sound. She holds a monthly radio residency with her art & activism collective CO:QUO (CO-CREATE STATUS-QUO) on Refuge Worldwide Radio, is growing a community of hybrid artists at SOUND OBSESSED, and a founding member of The IASAS (International Association of Synaesthetes, Artists, and Scientists). Her debut research-based AI audiovisual album 'WIRE' is set to release in Web 3.0 & all traditional formats on December 9th 2022 as a first of its kind: NFT to Vinyl.
From a young age, Portrait XO has always been inspired by jazz and improv but her upbringing was strongly focused on classical piano. After listening to Radiohead, Bjork, and Massive Attack for the first time in the late 90’s, that changed her entire perception of music-making. With an ongoing interest in exploring experimental approaches to writing, her move to London from 2006-2015 set her towards a new direction and appreciation for electronic music production. She’s a singer, songwriter, producer, and an interactive installation artist. She continues to explore different sounds from soulful pop to experimental to keep her productions evolving.
Her obsession with creative AI has given birth to new methods and approaches to songwriting, sound design, installations, and storytelling. Co-creating lyrics and melodies with an AI version of her voice, they perform together as a 'neural vocal duet'. The biggest contemplation with majority of Portrait XO's work question what it means to be human in a data driven society.