Barcelona and, by extension, Catalonia, has a rich, fertile, diverse ecosystem of agents working in the field of digital culture. Events such as the Digital Impact exhibition or Sónar’s 30th anniversary prove the importance and maturity of the city’s digital arts and culture sector, while posing a challenge to the city and the country: can we become an international leader in this field? What are the deficiencies or difficulties that this ecosystem faces, and how can we correct them to capitalize on its potential?

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming the digital backbone of our lives, affecting every aspect of entertainment, culture and communication. Launched in 2021 by Sónar, the UPC and betéve, the AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival explored the role of these new technologies in our lives, taking music as an example.

One of the three co-creations of artists and engineers that were created especially for the Festival was AWWZ b2b AI DJ, the result of a collaboration between producer and DJ AWWZ, and a team of researchers from the UPC: Mireia de Gràcia, Casimiro Pio and Dimas Ávila.

As part of Digital Impact, this transdisciplinary team will describe the process of co-creation, in which genre classification intersected with AI and performance. During the talk, they will present this specially trained AI, which translates YouTube comments into song suggestions, and AWWZ will give us a small demo of how it works.