Written for soprano Louise McClelland Jacobsen and Ensemble MidtVest (2024)

The piece is commissioned by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation P2 and the Danish Composers’ Society with the support from Koda Kultur. Premiered at Nørre Vosborg June 2024

The Danish broadcasting corporation P2 followed the work as it came into being, listen to the podcast series here:

https://www.dr.dk/lyd/p2/sopran-versus-ai-5532191020000

About the piece

This piece is written with the inspiration of Mozart’s aria, ‘Come Scoglio’ from Così fan Tutte.

As a starting point, different AI-characters were set to reproduce fragments of the aria by using AI voice synthesis. The task proved close to impossible for the AI’s.


This became the main inspiration of this piece about the opportunities in the impossible, the beauty in failure and the relationship between human and machine.

With a nod to the American thinker, Donna Haraway and her essay, ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ (1985) about the cyborg as a social and feminist emancipation figure, I’ve explored the potential of the human meeting with the machine, anno 2024.

Where could our time’s machine, Artificial Intelligence, and the cracks in perfection, take us in the view upon ourselves today?

As a reference, The AI-interpretations that have formed the main inspiration of the piece can be heard here*:

AI-GLINDA sings Louise McClelland Jacobsen
AI-FREYA sings Kiri te Kanawa
AI-CHARLOTTE sings Kiri te Kanawa
AI-ETHAN sings Kiri te Kanawa

*The original fragments sung by Louise McClelland Jacobsen and Kiri te Kanawa can be heard on the tracks along with the AI-interpretations.