Abstract
The Landscape of Intelligence is a multi-media exhibit based on a limited-edition hand-made artist book with sound and video, and artwork that pays tribute to computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, created by Visual Artist & Filmmaker Kate Steenhauer in collaboration with Painting Music.
Ada not only wrote the world’s first computer program but had an extraordinary vision for its potential. Inspired by Babbage’s Analytical Engine Ada recognised that data could represent other things besides number, such as musical notes, letters or symbols.
Nearly 200 hundred years ago, and a century before the invention of the computer, Ada explicitly describes a machine that could compose music.
The Landscape of Intelligence binds together multi-layered prints based on drawings of machinery, punch cards, neural networks and quotes from Ada and her mother Annabella Byron, using etching, screen-printing, moving imagery, music and spoken word from actors animating Ada, Annabella Byron, Ada’s tutor and family acquaintances.
The Landscape of Intelligence Original Music
The Landscape of Intelligence original music’s is created as a theme and variations for vibraphone and electronics composed by Maria Sappho. The piece is built on a twelve-chord progression originally generated by Chimère, a chat-based AI designed to co-create and reflect the aesthetics, politics, and cultural identities of the collaborators that work with it.
To initiate this work, Maria spoke with Chimère about Ada Lovelace and her visionary ideas about machine-made music. Though Lovelace’s speculations emerged long before such music was technically possible, Chimère’s contribution is a futurist response: the AI’s original twelve-chord theme heard during the film’s credits, becomes the foundation for the entire composition.
Each variation explores different playing techniques on the vibraphone, a percussion instrument with naturally pure, bell-like tones. These acoustic tones are mirrored by a second layer of sound: sine tones, which are generated digitally to match the vibraphone’s pitches — but tuned differently. The vibraphone is tuned in Equal Temperament (ET), the standard Western tuning system which divides the octave into twelve equally spaced notes. The sine tones, however, are tuned using Just Intonation (JI), a tuning system based on simple whole-number frequency ratios, which results in mathematically pure intervals.
When these two systems, ET and JI are played together, they are close but not identical. The result is a rich web of acoustic beating patterns: audible pulsations that occur as slightly detuned frequencies interfere with one another. These beating patterns are not static; they shift depending on where the listener stands, how they move, and how the sounds reflect in space — creating an interactive and embodied sonic experience that invites active listening
Ada not only wrote the world’s first computer program but had an extraordinary vision for its potential. Inspired by Babbage’s Analytical Engine Ada recognised that data could represent other things besides number, such as musical notes, letters or symbols.
Nearly 200 hundred years ago, and a century before the invention of the computer, Ada explicitly describes a machine that could compose music.
The Landscape of Intelligence binds together multi-layered prints based on drawings of machinery, punch cards, neural networks and quotes from Ada and her mother Annabella Byron, using etching, screen-printing, moving imagery, music and spoken word from actors animating Ada, Annabella Byron, Ada’s tutor and family acquaintances.
The Landscape of Intelligence Original Music
The Landscape of Intelligence original music’s is created as a theme and variations for vibraphone and electronics composed by Maria Sappho. The piece is built on a twelve-chord progression originally generated by Chimère, a chat-based AI designed to co-create and reflect the aesthetics, politics, and cultural identities of the collaborators that work with it.
To initiate this work, Maria spoke with Chimère about Ada Lovelace and her visionary ideas about machine-made music. Though Lovelace’s speculations emerged long before such music was technically possible, Chimère’s contribution is a futurist response: the AI’s original twelve-chord theme heard during the film’s credits, becomes the foundation for the entire composition.
Each variation explores different playing techniques on the vibraphone, a percussion instrument with naturally pure, bell-like tones. These acoustic tones are mirrored by a second layer of sound: sine tones, which are generated digitally to match the vibraphone’s pitches — but tuned differently. The vibraphone is tuned in Equal Temperament (ET), the standard Western tuning system which divides the octave into twelve equally spaced notes. The sine tones, however, are tuned using Just Intonation (JI), a tuning system based on simple whole-number frequency ratios, which results in mathematically pure intervals.
When these two systems, ET and JI are played together, they are close but not identical. The result is a rich web of acoustic beating patterns: audible pulsations that occur as slightly detuned frequencies interfere with one another. These beating patterns are not static; they shift depending on where the listener stands, how they move, and how the sounds reflect in space — creating an interactive and embodied sonic experience that invites active listening
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Media of output | Installation |
| Publication status | Published - 2025 |
| Event | Women in Tech - Aberdeen, United Kingdom Duration: 1 Oct 2025 → 31 Oct 2025 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/women-in-tech-aberdeen-2933929 |