Ghosts of Future Grafts

Spatial Composition, 12’15
By Pía Baltazar, Daniela Huerta & Gadi Sassoon

Ghosts of Future Grafts is one of the artistic outcomes of Wilding AI, a year-long collective research-creation project questioning the role and impact of AI in artistic creation, with a focus on spatial audio. Starting from the premise of considering AI agents as collaborators rather than tools, the three composers have experimented with various generative systems for audio generation and spatialization, and reflected on the impact of AI as a general-purpose technology on our existence. Focusing in particular on the question of embodiment, both from the perspective of the creative tools and of the effect AI has on our nervous systems, the composers chose a posture of refusal, and generated the materials of the composition solely through performances with voice and analog synthesizers, stemming from a session at Gadi Sassoon’s Milan studio, by immersing in it and considering as an instrument of its own. Then, in a second phase, during a residency at UdeM, they worked on the spatial sculpting of this raw material, in order to shape it as a kind of sacrificial ritual of the ghosts of AI agents, as an exorcism of their invasion of our nervous systems. 

The piece was included in the collective composition FERAL FREQUENCIES, premiered in SAT’s dome on MUTEK’s opening on August 19, 2025, and diffused at SPATIAL Festival by MONOM at Funkhaus Berlin, on September 12 2025. It was diffused for the first time as a standalone composition on October 31 at Akousma, Montreal.

This composition is created for spatial audio setups and can be adapted to virtually any systems in one hour. 

Below is a basic binaural render of the piece: this does not convey properly the spatialization of the piece but gives a good impression of the composition.