The voice of Farinelli

A series of works with Judith Deschamps

A multi-year collaboration with the artist Judith Deschamps reconstructing the voice of the 18th-century castrato Farinelli with AI, developed at IRCAM together with the composer António Sá-Dantas and Axel Roebel.

We recreated the voice of the castrato Farinelli using a deep neural network trained on seven singers spanning soprano to tenor, embracing the multiplicity and instability of his historical vocal range. The collaboration produced an interactive installation, an improvising AI, and a film.

an·other voice — installation (2023)

The synthetic voice was exhibited as the installation an·other voice at Casino Luxembourg and at the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab. A presence sensor triggers the voice only when a visitor stands in a specially designed listening position, mirroring the solitary stance of the king for whom Farinelli historically performed.

Farinelli Improviser

A simple AI that improvises a reinterpretation of Quell’usignolo by rearranging small sections according to predefined transitions, using a Markov chain to move unpredictably across eleven keys.

• Interactive installation: https://farinelli.judithdeschamps.com/
• Source code: github.com/fbous/farinelli-improviser

La Mue — film (2022)

A video documentary by Judith Deschamps about scientists recreating Farinelli’s voice. See it under Films.