Every year the US-China Music Institute at Bard College host an experimental performance at Carnegie Hall. The 2024 theme was Composing the Future, exploring the world of music being created by emerging technology. For the first time, composers used AI to write musical notation. It was then performed live on classical instruments, many of them more than one hundred years old.

The front of house LED billboards on Seventh Ave were animated, as were the social feeds and the backdrops on the stage itself. But the visual output is not quite what it seems. In fact, it's the opposite. It's easy to assume that the lettering was AI generated. None of it was. We created it, using human hands, eyes and minds, but replicating the way machines 'think.'

We asked the machines to work like people. And the people to think like machines. The result was a thrilling melange, quite literally unlike anything the ensemble had ever played. We were exploring the boundary between the past and the future. We signposted everything very clearly, but left the final decision up to the audience itself.

Made by Man or Machine. Can you tell? Can you, really? And how did knowing that affect your response? Huge questions. And ones we will face every day, if we are not already doing so.