duets-in-latent-space

Born in Latent Space

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performance + creative coding + generative AI + sound + concept by Marlon Barrios Solano

This is the unseeable space in which machine learning makes its meaning. Beyond that which we are incapable of visualizing is that which we are incapable of even understanding.
— James Bridle

A Lecture-Performance by Marlon Barrios Solano

Born in Latent Space is a live lecture-performance that unfolds as a speculative, real-time collaboration between the artist and machine learning models. Seated before a laptop, Marlon Barrios Solano engages with generative AI systems to explore latent space—conceived not only as a technical structure, but as a realm of all possible stories.

Latent space, in machine learning, refers to a high-dimensional abstract representation of data where compressed, hidden features are encoded. In this piece, it becomes a poetic and political territory—an unstable, generative dimension where memory, desire, identity, and imagination recombine through algorithmic play.

Through gestures, voice, and code, the performer navigates a shifting audiovisual landscape shaped by real-time responses from AI: generated text, images, and sound. The work combines storytelling, re-performance, movement scores, web-based interaction, and algorithmic improvisation.

Structured as a series of vignettes and data-driven rituals, Born in Latent Space traverses themes of:

•	Queer longing and techno-intimacy
•	Cybernetics and time travel
•	Migration, displacement, and diasporic memory
•	AI ethics, recursion, and synthetic cognition

By manipulating prompts and responding to generative outputs, Marlon transforms the interface into a stage for critical fictioning and embodied speculation—interrogating dominant narratives embedded within AI systems while proposing alternate futures and inclusive algorithmic poetics.

Technologies used include:

•	p5.js and Next.js (creative coding and reactive interfaces)
•	Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for image generation
•	Large Language Models (LLMs) for textual dialogue and narrative creation
•	Real-time body and gesture recognition models
•	Custom web apps programmed by the artist

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Born in Latent Space can be presented in multiple formats: • A solo lecture-performance • A media installation that activates the same generative processes in an autonomous or interactive setting • A creative lab or workshop on performance, generative AI, and embodied computation • A hybrid exhibition-performance format with modular interactive components

In all its forms, Born in Latent Space invites audiences into the speculative and affective edges of AI—a space where presence is recombinant, identity is mutable, and data becomes poetic matter.

Duration: 25 to 45 minutes (adjusted to the context and venue)

It has been presented at:

It can be adapted as installation-performances, installations, online apps, and as in-person and online lecture-performances.

Nodes or Vignettes

Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square

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Video

Bruce Nauman’s video performance Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square (1967–68) served as a template for my exploration of what is considered canonical or a model. I use the square as a metaphor for inhabiting the alien—performing the alienation that stands in contrast to the normative, disciplined body. By exaggerating movement, Marlon interrogates the boundaries of conceptual experimentation, viewing it through the lens of white privilege. This perspective calls attention to how certain bodies and practices are excluded or marginalized within the same conceptual frameworks that define avant-garde art, subtly critiquing the institutionalization of experimentalism as an exclusive realm of white privilege. It represents the internalized latent space as a square.

Pseudo Ouroboros: The Genesis of Self Interest in Gradient Descent

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Pseudo Ouroboros is an experimental interactive generative art project that fuses intricate visual patterns with dynamic audio synthesis. Inspired by self-organizing systems and the iterative nature of gradient descent, this project simulates a snake-like organism that continuously evolves—mimicking the ancient symbol of eternal cyclic renewal, the Ouroboros.

A Hand is Four Relationships

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

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Cyber Blue

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Canonical (memory warmup/accumulation in Space and Time)

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We are all looking for Mr Parker

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“I was 8. A Sunday, warm. We went to Mr. Parker’s house. My grandmother’s boss. He was from Texas, she said. A big place, far off. Didn’t know much about it. Only the name. Texas. He worked for La Creole. The oil company. My grandmother, self-taught in English, had worked her way up to this. Proud.

We found him in the back. He was working on a boat. A wooden boat. He called us over, us kids. The boat wasn’t finished. Pieces of wood, scattered. He wasn’t wearing much. A sleeveless shirt. Arms bare, skin pale. Pink in places, burnt from the sun. His hair, blonde, messy. He looked at me.

“Marlon, look at this.” His voice, low. He showed me the wood, how he was fitting it together. I nodded, but I wasn’t watching the wood. I watched him. His arms, his hands. The way his skin looked, almost glowing in the sun. The way he spoke. English. Not just words, but something else. I didn’t understand. Couldn’t. But I listened. It was like hearing something far off. A place I didn’t know.

He switched to Spanish. Slow, deliberate, the words thick with his “gringo” accent. Clumsy, but sweet. He tried. It made me smile. Made me feel something, though I didn’t know what. There was a rhythm in the air. Something I couldn’t name. Not then. I just stood there, listening. The heat of the Venezuelan sun, his voice, the way he looked at me. Like I was the only one there.

Goosebumps rose on my arms, even though it was warm. He smiled. I remember that. And the sound of his voice. And something else, something like seeing a shadow before it arrives. Like knowing what’s coming, even if you don’t have the words for it yet. It was all there, in his voice, in the way he spoke. I couldn’t see the boat. Couldn’t see anything else. Just him. The way his arms moved, the way his skin flushed under the sun. The words didn’t matter. I didn’t understand it all, but I didn’t need to. It stayed with me.

Quiet. Waiting. Mr. Parker, from Texas.”

Extraordinary Alien

I am in love with Alan Turing

Gameplay Screenshot

Entropic Haiku

Conversations with a Possible Mind

VIDEO of Conversations with Possible Minds – Duets in Latent Space @ Live Arts Festival 2024 Cape Town, SA

Patient X: Can you help please?

In Pursuit of Stolen Ghosts (DRAWING TOOL VERSION)

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Video of In Pursuit of Stolen Ghosts – Duets in Latent Space performed @ Live Arts Festival 2024 | Cape Town
VIDEO CAPTURE OF APP

In Pursuit of Stolen Ghosts (GENERATIVE-INTERACTIVE VERSION AND BROWN COLORS)

TongueZap: The Hungry Chameleon Game

Gameplay Screenshot

TongueZap is an interactive webcam game where you become a chameleon trying to catch flies with your tongue. Using face detection technology, the game tracks your facial movements and lets you catch flies by opening your mouth.

🎮 Live App

Play Now

PROTEUS

Bauhaus Time Traveller

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Video of Bauhaus Time Traveller – Duets in Latent Space @ Live Arts Festival 2024 Cape Town
VIDEO CAPTURE OF APP

Bauhaus Time Traveller (Overlay Version)

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VIDEO CAPTURE OF APP

Bauhaus Time Traveller STRIPPERS (Crossfading)

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Bauhaus Time Traveller STRIPPERS

Pangesa People | What if Europe never existed?

Instrumental Proximities

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Impossible Simplicity

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Śūnyatā

Digretions in Latent Space (The Music Album is a collection of 14 tracks created to support the performance lecture Born in Latent Space

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ALBUM

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Time is Love Story (version)

Proteans

Sens8 Orgy

Neutrinos

Symbionts

Bonobos

Flat and Deep

Hyper-elements in Latent Space (Autonomous Duet)

Pulling Molecules

The Body of the Text

In the Works

Daniel
Symbiont
paxton-Brooks
the golden braid
Husky
Pangea
smuggling meaning
fragmentation

Remembering Steve Paxton (1939-2024)

Initail concept and apps developed at Art and Research Residency at Lake Studios Berlin, February 2024

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2024 Marlon Barrios Solano

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.