Instrumentation
2(picc).2(corA).2(bcl).2(cbn) / 2.2.2(2=btbn).1 / timp+2perc / pno / strings / solo violin
The violin soloist is amplified.
Movements
- Emergence
- Pattern Recognition
- Automaton
- Simulacrum
- Uncanny Valley
- Deus Ex Machina
- Turing Test
- Ghost in the Machine
- Code Appendix
Listen
Scores & Performance Materials
Program Note
The technological singularity (also, simply, the singularity) is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence (ASI) will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization. According to this hypothesis, an upgradable intelligent agent (such as a computer running software-based artificial general intelligence) would enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, with each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an intelligence explosion and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human intelligence. —Wikipedia
“Success in creating effective AI, could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don't know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and side-lined, or conceivably destroyed by it.” —Stephen Hawking
The proliferation in the 2020s of generative artificial intelligence systems has marked a turning point in our civilization, the results of which – I think – we’ve only begun to recognize. For good and ill, this technological watershed has found resonance in my preoccupation with the ethics of technology – and in the literature (fiction or non-) that explores the topic. The possible eventual emergence of artificial superintelligence has long been a source of great concern amongst writers of speculative fiction and, more recently, amongst the leading scientific, technological, and philosophical minds of our generation.
My Violin Concerto: On a Path to Singularity is a musical exploration of that line of inquiry. Somewhere between a baroque concerto and an instrumental sci-fi oratorio, the work positions the soloist as the surrogate for machine learning (the synthetic), while the orchestra surrounding her fills in for humanity (the organic). As the artificial entity learns and grows increasingly towards sentience, the music asks itself: what is the end run? Will this lead to utopia or to a darker alternative?
—HS | www.hstafylakis.com
Commission and premiere
Commissioned by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Premiered February 27, 2025 by Rachel Barton Pine and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Daniel Raiskin conducting. The solo violin part was edited by Rachel Barton Pine.
Press
“Such are Stafylakis’s thought-provoking works, which pose potent questions rather than provide pat answers, leaving listeners to draw their own conclusions.”