A musician born and raised in East Germany and currently residing in Finland sparks some creative thoughts on what sort of music will emenate from this cultural legacy. AGF is an artist exploring the role of mathematics and evolution through her most intriguing ambient sound scapes, or as she puts it herself:
More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity. I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber. I need it for my dreams.
If anything her music is, not electronic per se, but electricity in its most pure form – odd waveforms in a smooth blend with electrified heartbeats and alien vocals, very repetitive, never boring. On this album, there are sonic ideas towards that most futuristic genre of our decade; grime. On ‘greim69’, sound effects and fragments of digitally-processed noise dart across the stereo-field. There is also a sister-track ‘greim93’, and ‘time {if 1+2 = you}’, the lead single from her 2015 EP: >if * true ~ time [ x ] 1 + 2 = you . \ <. For AGF, these algorithmic cut-ups of sound and poetry give us a way of understanding our current situation.
Probably more of an artistic installation than a live performer on stage it is fascinating to hear nature interpreted in this way or as AGF describes the record: structural illusion. the mathematics of emotions. sculptress of soundlings. my voice noise. rooster rhyme. greim love. ernst. network-mycelium. exec friendship crews. sonic wildness. club aesthetics without club. 544 reasons to live. adult-hollow-hood. transformation capa-cities. the radical self. the internetness and our potential to become cyborgs. pitch, shape, colour & tone. snowden revelations and the crew. public reverberation. non-human spaces. wild code. thoughts on capita-lis-monsters. sonic editing. between radigue – xenakis – influences of grime. the end of the CD object. wither-beauty. ink leftovers. silly poetess extravanganza. this is my process. thankfulness.
Kon:3p>UTION to: e[VOL]ution is the 9th solo album of the artist and producer AGF (Antye Greie, also Anye Greie-Ripatti or formerly Antye Greie-Fuchs, Laub). It is the 30th studio album as executive producer in collabarations with Vladislav Delay, Gudrun Gut, The Lappetites, Craig Armstrong.
If you need more insights into the album title hints are plentiful as AGF is also active as poetry writer. In this the inclusion of lines on ‘the mathematics of emotions’, ‘non-human spaces’ and ‘our potential to become cyborgs’. As we export more of our creativity into automated technology, we are being steadily replaced. But for AGF this is no reason to despair. As she sings on the album, “we are vast and limitless”.
Cyborg applies to an organism that has restored function or enhanced abilities due to the integration of some artificial component or technology that relies on some sort of feedback. While cyborgs are commonly thought of as mammals, including humans, they might also conceivably be any kind of organism. It is hypothesized that cyborg technology will form a part of postbiological evolution, in the form of transhumanism – where people are artificially enhanced beyond their original biological characteristics.
D. S. Halacy’s Cyborg: Evolution of the Superman in 1965 featured an introduction which spoke of a “new frontier” that was “not merely space, but more profoundly the relationship between ‘inner space’ to ‘outer space’ – a bridge…between mind and matter.” In popular culture, some cyborgs may be represented as visibly mechanical as almost indistinguishable from humans. The 1970s television series The Six Million Dollar Man featured one of the most famous fictional cyborgs, referred to as a bionic man; the series was based upon a novel by Martin Caidin titled Cyborg. Cyborgs in fiction often play up a human contempt for over-dependence on technology, particularly when used for war, and when used in ways that seem to threaten free will.
ABOUT
AGF aka poemproducer is the artist name of Antye Greie-Ripatti. Born and raised in East Germany. AGF is a vocalist, digitalsongwriter, producer, performer, e-poet, calligrapher, digital media artist and curator. She is known for artistic exploration of digital technology through the deconstruction of language and communication. twitter: @poemproducer