Taper
Project information
submitted by
Seoyeon Lee
Mentors
Prof. Ursula Damm,
Mindaugas Gapševičius,
Michael Fischer
Faculty:
Art and Design
Degree programme:
Media Art and Design -Study programme Media Art und Design (MAD) (english) (Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.))
Type of project presentation
Artwork
Semester
Summer semester 2026
- Humboldtstraße 36 - Sendehalle
Available during summaery's regular opening hours
Project description
Taper is an installation that explores the relationship between analog decay and machine learning. The artist’s voice is recorded onto cassette tape, analyzed and imitated by an AI model, transferred back onto cassette, and then used again as training material. Through these repeated cycles, the voice gradually changes.
The project examines what »aging« means in the context of digital reproduction. As the voice passes repeatedly between cassette tape and artificial intelligence, not only linguistic characteristics but also material traces such as tape hiss, distortion, and loss of quality become part of the learning process. In this way, deterioration itself is transformed into data.
Taper makes audible the ways in which memory, technical reproduction, and data processing influence one another. The installation investigates the boundary between original and copy, while exploring whether the traces of time can be learned, reproduced, and transmitted by a machine. It ultimately asks a single question: can decay itself be reproduced?