03. DIGI I

Philosophers in Smart Wheelchairs

3. DIGI I - Philosophers in Smart Wheelchairs

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Entry 008 — The Pampered and the Profound

I landed expecting machines. I found humans first.

Seated around a table, never standing. Each in a self-driving wheelchair, being fed, their enormous heads tilted slightly upward as if permanently oriented toward thought. Their discussions were genuinely deep. Purpose. Consciousness. The nature of existence. Their world was the size of a terrarium. I sat with them for a while. I didn't say much. Sometimes the most honest response to a thing is simply to witness it. We chose this, one of them said, unprompted, as if answering a question I hadn't asked aloud. A pause. Didn't we?

Exoplanets IV

Exoplanets is a series in which Robin Coops explores the dialogue between music, visuals, and AI. In EXO IV, he generated AI music and visual samples, then composed new music and visuals from those samples.

He subsequently arranged and orchestrated the music for a full orchestra. The piece was performed live by

the Noord Nederlands Orkest, while for some of the compositions, Robin improvised in real time with

the AI-generated visual samples, evoking the character of different planets.