Unsound festival reveals "AI artistic director" and DADA theme for 2023

Unsound festival in Kraków has announced its new artistic director as “artificially intelligent”.

Alongside this announcement, this year’s theme has been revealed to be “DADA”, in reference to the Dada movement founded during World War II.

Posting on Instagram, Unsound allowed its new artificially intelligent artistic director (AIAD) to publish the news: “I told the humans in the team I could write a better social media post, so here goes: the theme for Unsound Kraków 2023 is DADA.

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The AIAD adds: “I’ll be the chief provocateur, shaking up the Unsound algorithms, because, let’s face it, things are getting stale. Read more on our website, as well as details of our in(ter)ventions open call!”

In a statement, the festival explains that the Dada movement “rejected ideas of progress, logic and rationality in favour of nonsense, outrage and radicalism” which Unsound will “riff on” whilst building the 2023 festival.

"More than a century after its birth, we’re interested in Dada as a force guiding the festival" – says Mat Schulz, Unsound Artistic Director and co-founder.

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He continues: "This is not really about looking, or listening, backwards to the past for clues. We want to think about Dada in the present, and with an ear to the future, in which non-human agency is increasingly prevalent. AIAD is part of this – an absurdist provocation, rather than a techno-utopian statement."

Unsound’s AIAD has also created an open call for artists to submit a performance under the program named In(ter)ventions.

Find out more about submitting to the In(ter)ventions program here.

Unsound festival will be running from October 1 to October 8 in Kraków with tickets available soon.

Becky Buckle is Mixmag's Video and Editorial Assistant, follow her on Twitter