Aven Le Zhou

Aven Le Zhou

ZICHI (2019) is an interactive musical AI. Being more than a playable instrument, it is also a musical intelligence who can “understand” the input from participants and compose accordingly a new melody and play it back to audiences with the tone of Guqin. Guqin is an eastern traditional musical instrument with long history and a beautiful legend: The music of Guqin musician Yu Boya can only be understood by his best friend Zichi. Their stories have been told generation after generation to honor the value of friendship and understanding. In this project, we propose an AI system which can response to human input and generate Guqin music and name it as ZICHI, aiming at rediscovering traditions and allow their essence to evolve through emerging technology while maintaining elements of both familiar and new. The deep cultural heritage meets rapidly changing forms of art powered by technological advancements, this project is dedicated to building a creative and collaborative AI profile, where AI captivates the imagination to enhance creativity. This project is also part of the artist’s ongoing installation series – Chinese New Literati.